Countering Germ Warfare
November 17, 2000
B’nai B’rith Incident Spawned Tetracore’s Quick ID of
Substances
Thomas O’Brien, Beverly Mangold, Bob Blase (who joined
the company after its founding) and Bill Nelson.
A suspicious package discovered three years ago in the
mail room of B’nai B’rith’s Washington headquarters sparked fears of
biological terrorism.
Authorities had no way to quickly tell if the oozing red
substance found in a Manila envelope at the Jewish community
organization was really the deadly bacterium anthrax, as its label
indicated. Thus, workers were barricaded in their offices for more
than eight hours, two city blocks were shut down and two employees
were stripped to their underwear and hosed with chemicals on the
sidewalk.
In the end, the incident turned out be a
hoax--scientists analyzed the material and discovered it to be a
common household bacterium. But such hoaxes helped spawn a Maryland
biotechnology company that’s developing tools to prevent panicked
reactions to the specter of biological attack.
Bill Nelson, Thomas O’Brien, Gary Long and Beverly
Mangold were part of the team of scientists at the Naval Medical
Research Institute in Bethesda called on to analyze the suspicious
material during the B’nai B’rith incident. Two years ago, the four
colleagues pulled together $100,000 to start Tetracore LLC, a
Gaithersburg company that makes devices to detect agents of biological
warfare and infectious diseases such as anthrax, plague and smallpox.
Tetracore, whose founders helped the U.S. military
inspect biological weapons sites in Iraq, makes detection tools for
hazardous materials response teams, known as HazMat units, which would
be first on the scene in situations involving biological and chemical
attack.
The company, which has not taken money from outside
investors, generated about $400,000 in revenue last year and expects
to make $3 million this year, according to Nelson. The company now has
25 employees and just moved into new offices in Gaithersburg.
Tetracore makes two kinds of diagnostic tools to detect
deadly germs. Its BioThreat Alert test strips, which work like home
pregnancy tests, let emergency response teams know if a disease agent
is present within minutes. The test strip is a small plastic device in
which a sample of a questionable substance is placed. The device
contains anthrax antibodies, proteins produced to combat the anthrax
bacterium. If anthrax is present, it binds to the antibodies and
causes a white paper strip to change colors.
"This gives them an opportunity to quickly pick up
material and analyze it," Nelson said. "If it is anthrax, they could
quickly take the necessary measures."
So far, the company has designed a test for anthrax, or
Bacillus anthracis, a livestock bacterium that can be deadly when
inhaled by humans. It has developed a proprietary method to make the
anthrax antibodies using cells from mice. It is making similar test
strips for other disease agents such as ricin, botulinum toxin and
plague.
The company also develops DNA-based tests that detect
the agents by recognizing their genetic sequences. The genetic tests,
meant to be used alongside the test strips, are much more sensitive
than the strips and can detect bacteria long after death.
They are similar to the tests Nelson, Long and O’Brien
used when they helped the United Nations Special Commission inspect
Iraqi biological weapons facilities after the Persian Gulf War.
"Even though they had stopped producing anthrax a long
time ago, they couldn’t get rid of all the evidence," Nelson said.
In recent years, fear of biological attacks has been
growing among public officials, afraid that disease agents will get
into the hands of terrorists and be deliberately released on the
public. Fears were stoked in 1995 when Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo
released the deadly nerve gas sarin in the Tokyo subway system. The
group had previously made several attempts to use anthrax and other
toxins.
In 1996, after the Oklahoma City bombing, Congress
passed the Domestic Preparedness Program to train public safety and
health-care workers to react to terrorist attacks.
In addition to the potential for biological attack,
officials are concerned about the growing number of hoaxes like the
one at Washington’s B’nai B’rith building.
Montgomery County recently purchased about two dozen of
Tetracore’s test strips for anthrax. Theodore Jarboe, the county’s
fire marshal, said rapid testing devices are essential in dealing with
potential biological attacks.
"Time is critical when you’re dealing with the release
of a biological agent that could be harmful to people," Jarboe said.
"The sooner we know if a substance is present or not, the quicker we
can determine the best course of action to manage the incident."
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
by Terence Chea
Washington Post Staff Writer
Source: The Washington Post
Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37162-2000Nov16.html