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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Fundamental research that began almost 30 years ago at Oregon State University on vaccinia virus, which was once used to prevent smallpox, and the streptococcal bacterium that can cause strep throat has evolved into some of the nation's most promising approaches to biowarfare defense - and could ultimately lead to treatment for a range of other serious diseases.

These programs are now being conducted in a partnership between OSU and SIGA Technologies, a national biotech company that has its primary research programs based in Corvallis.

Late last year the firm announced that one of its leading candidate drugs to treat smallpox would begin phase one clinical trials, a major step toward its eventual approval for use, and one of the first times a drug designed for biowarfare defense has been tested in humans. The company also is undergoing a major expansion, adding employees and planning a merger with another pharmaceutical development company. Much of its support is from the National Institutes of Health.

This relationship between OSU and SIGA has also had significant payoffs for OSU student education and collaborative research in the past decade, officials say, and demonstrates how basic research in the academic arena can lead to applications and economic growth in the private sector.

"About 15 years of basic research at OSU has set the stage for much of what we hope to accomplish at SIGA," said Dennis Hruby, a professor of microbiology at OSU and chief science officer for the company. "There aren't a lot of biotech companies in Oregon, but we're able to make things work here because of our close working relationship with the university, shared resources and a talent base to draw on. A lot of students do internships here and in turn our staff helps teach several university courses."

Early work on the vaccinia virus and Group A streptococci have yielded two excellent model systems for studying microbial pathogens, Hruby said, one viral and the other bacterial. The approach now being focused upon at SIGA, and reinforced by research at OSU, is use of antiviral drugs that can help treat serious illnesses where a vaccine is unavailable, too risky or not able to be prepared in time.

Vaccine development is continuing as well, including work on a strep throat vaccine and a new type of smallpox vaccine - effective but without the side effects of the original. And the fundamental work with bacterial surface proteins - a basic step in the bacterial attachment and infection process - may allow the creation of an alternative treatment other than antibiotics, or new types of antibiotics that deal with the growing crisis of antibiotic resistance.

"Biowarfare concerns are a leading issue at the moment, but much of this same work should ultimately be able to be applied towards other diseases as well," Hruby said. "This is as much about emerging diseases as it is terrorism. We've never really had a drug that could effectively treat smallpox, and the same approach might be used to create treatments for hemorrhagic diseases such as ebola, tropical diseases like dengue or Lassa fever, or even SARS or avian flu."

One of the current drugs being tested as a treatment for smallpox - which experts are worried could be used by terrorists in a biological attack - targets two key "proteinases" the smallpox virus encodes. If these can be blocked, infection can be prevented. A feature on this advance was recently published in the journal Microbe.

"The smallpox antiviral treatment is tremendously exciting and we're optimistic it will perform well," Hruby said. "If it works as we think it will, we'll develop other smallpox drugs and use this approach to create a pipeline for a variety of disease treatments that never existed before."

Smallpox used as a weapon, experts say, could have an incubation time as short as seven days, allowing very little time for vaccine administration even if one were available. The use of current live vaccines for mass immunizations has been discontinued because of complications in some individuals.

The federal support for work of this type is large and appears to be stable, Hruby said. Project Bioshield, designed to improve medical countermeasures that could protect Americans from a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack, has been allocated $5.6 billion over the next five years.