See what we’re reading this week at Global Biodefense on topics including clinical trials of anthrax treatments, revisiting NIH biosafety guidelines, and a tour of Dugway Proving Ground.
POLICY, PRACTICES & POLITICS
- Revisit NIH biosafety guidelines (Science)
- How the government will pay companies to develop biodefense products (RAPS)
- A Global Catastrophic Biologic Risk by any other name would smell as sweet (Contagion)
- Planning biodefense: security and the competitive city (ResearchGate)
- Psych evals for the U.S. Army Biological Personnel Reliability Program (De Gruyter)
BIOPREPAREDNESS
- Why should we evaluate global pandemic preparedness? (Contagion)
- Preparing for the future of disaster health volunteerism (NAP)
- We’re not close to being prepared for the next pandemic, says this doctor (PBS)
- A Swedish forum for biopreparedness diagnostics (MAL)
SELECT AGENTS
- Preclinical trials testing anti-toxin therapies for B. anthracis infection (PubMed)
- Bacillus spp. cells captured selectively by phages and identified by SERS (MDPI)
- Bubonic plague in Arizona: Fleas found carrying the infectious disease (USA Today)
- Hippos, anthrax and hunger make a deadly mix (NPR)
- Role of food insecurity in outbreak of anthrax infections (EID)
- A bivalent anthrax–plague vaccine (Frontiers in Immunology)
MEDICAL COUNTERMEASURES
- Addressing superbug resistance with phage therapy (Medical Xpress)
- Why it’s time for a rethink on flu vaccination (The Conversation)
- Here’s the visual proof of why vaccines do more good than harm (Science)
OUTBREAK NEWS & THREAT SURVEILLANCE
- Zika has all but disappeared in the Americas. Why? (Science)
- How Yemen’s cholera outbreak spread to a half-million people (STAT)
- MRSA over 3 decades: A pathogen with ‘devastating complications’ (Healio)
- Typhus making a comeback in Texas (My San Antonio)
- Fatal H7N9 case reported in China (CIDRAP)
RESEARCH + TECH
- Gene editing could stop cancer, diabetes and bioterrorism (Newsweek)
- At CRISPRcon, debating the promise and perils of gene editing (GEN)
- Killing bacteria by hacking plastics with silver and electricity (Lab Equipment)
- Clip-on laboratories turning smartphones into medical test units (ABC AU)
- Biohackers encoded malware in a strand of DNA (Wired)
SPECIAL INTEREST
- Inside the Dugway Proving Ground (The Atlantic)
- The Weaponizing of Biology: Bioterrorism, Biocrime and Biohacking (Google)