Consider it a changing of the guard.
New York's aging Plum Island Animal Disease Center – a major biosafety level 3 animal disease research facility – is preparing to be phased out by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, NBAF, currently being built in Manhattan, KS.
While NBAF is not projected to be fully operational until 2018, the pathogen work at Plum Island will not stop. Instead, much of it will transition to Kansas State University's Biosecurity Research Institute at Pat Robert's Hall before eventually transitioning to NBAF.
Stephen Higgs, research director at the Biosecurity Research Institute, or BRI, and the associate vice president for research at Kansas State University, spent two weeks at Plum Island in September 2011, in part to discuss the Plum Island-BRI transition process.
“Essentially, the BRI is going to be a springboard to get NBAF research going as soon as possible after it opens,” Higgs says. “As Plum Island ramps down, we are making sure that there is not a drop-off in research and training on these pathogens. That's important because we cannot afford to have a period where there's not work being done on these diseases should one of them happen to come to America.”
Although no definitive date has been set for when projects will begin transferring to the Biosecurity Research Institute, Higgs says that university and Manhattan-based U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers are already working on some research projects related to the current disease studies at Plum Island, and are procuring the necessary approvals in order to soon begin on others – including African swine fever and high-path avian influenza.
Additionally, an insectary was recently completed at the Biosecurity Research Institute that will help its scientists work on insect-spread diseases like Rift Valley fever and blue tongue viruses. The insectary is something Plum Island is not equipped with, but may be a part of the research at NBAF.
While visiting Plum Island, Higgs also met with researchers about transboundary animal diseases, those occurring in multiple counties and capable of being carried to new ones. Higgs taught classes on Rift Valley fever virus and on mosquito-virus interactions, and gave talks on the Biosecurity Research Institute and NBAF.
“Moving these projects from Plum Island to the BRI really opens up new possibilities for infectious disease research at K-State that hasn't been possible in the past,” Higgs says. “These are high-priority pathogens of major concern because they are a threat to our agricultural system. I really see this as being a whole new era at Kansas State University.”