The largest portion of the veterinary school's contract with the National Institute of Health (NIH) will go to developing an extensive center to study botulism, even though the vet school has no previous experience with the bacteria.
Seventeen million dollars out of the total $25 million contract will go to develop the Center for Botulinum Therapies Research and Development.
According to vet school professor Saul Tzipori, who was responsible for acquiring the contract from the NIH, Tufts won the contract because it had a unique vision of how to proceed with research.
"We have ideas and new approaches," he said. "The NIH was looking for someone who will execute the objective of antitoxin therapy. For that we really need understanding of what's available and how it can be improved. We have a broader outlook."
Although the vet school doesn't have any experience working with botulism specifically, for 12 years the school has been funded by the NIH to study infectious diseases. Previous work has gone into studying E. coli and its effects.
"We have expertise in antibodies that are associated with infectious diseases," Tzipori said. "The work with botulism will be the same - just harder. We developed a whole plan of action - it shows we can develop a new approach."
The center will be responsible for developing a centralized bio-database generated from information from around the nation, in addition to studying the toxin that is produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum. Infection of this bacterium results in botulism poisoning.
In developing the botulism center the vet school will be working with the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, which has experience studying the chemistry of the bacteria the produces the botulism toxin.
"[UMass-Dartmouth] has a track record in understanding the functions of these toxins and understanding the chemistry," Tzipori said.
Although Tufts is subcontracting some work to UMass-Dartmouth, the remainder of the work will be done in-house by members of the vet school faculty. "That's what our strength is," Tzipori said. "That's what makes it easy."
The additional eight million dollars from the contract will go to develop a Microbiology Research Unit (MRU) designed to study food and water-born diseases.
Within the MRU, the vet school will work to identify different pathogens, develop therapy for food and water-born illnesses, and determine which food and water-born diseases can transfer from animals to humans.
The vet school is part of a collection of five different universities that constitute the Food and Waterborne Diseases Integrated Research Network. Other universities include Michigan State and the University of Maryland. In total, this year the NIH distributed $100 million to the five institutions to study various components associated with bio-terrorism.
The vet school will play an important role in the national emergency response plan if the US is a victim of bioterrorism. The vet school will be responsible for identifying pathogens and supplying information to the government.
The government's urgency in studying potential bioterror agents, like botulism, increased after Sept.11. President Bush cited fear that Saddam Hussein's government had the ability to produce biological weapons of mass destruction.
The US budget for 2003 included $2.4 billion to start research on ways to combat bioterrorism. The government awarded The NIH $1.75 billion to conduct research, which funds Tufts.
The MRU center is in the implementation stage of its plan. If all goes well, within three years Tzipori and others will test the procedures developed to see if they are effective in combating the infectious diseases.
The infectious diseases department at the Vet School got started with a grant from the NIH. This current contract is the largest one that Tufts has ever won.
Tzipori is confident that there are enough resources available to achieve all of the goals outlined for the NIH. "The money is there to do all of these activities, we just have to set priorities," he said.
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