News Article -- October 01, 2008

Biodefense Q&A Series with Dr. House: Part 1 - DVC and Biodefense

Q: What has it been like to be part of a developing industry in biodefense?
A: I would say that it has been 1) exciting, and 2) frustrating. I believe that developing countermeasures against biological and chemical threat agents is about the most important thing I could be doing with my life. It is exciting, and rewarding at the end of the day to know that that day we’ve made progress on things no one has done before. It can also be frustrating. We recognize the urgency of the situation, but in biodefense, nobody can be sure if or when these agents will be used. Every day is a race against the clock to get these products ready, in the event that they are needed to protect our warfighters and the civilian population.

Q: Is DVC still focused on biodefense?
A: DVC continues to work on biodefense products for our first customer, the Department of Defense Chemical Biological Medical Systems Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program (CBMS-JVAP) as well as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. We are also branching out in a logical way to product development of agents that would protect humanity from diseases we don’t often see. For example, we are developing a therapeutic called BioScavenger to protect against nerve gas agents. We have also begun offering our services in the public health arena. One example of this is our work, along with Baxter Healthcare, developing cell-cultured vaccines to protect against both seasonal and pandemic influenza, which are both major public health threats, and in the case of pandemic, something that we don’t see but every half-century or so.

Q: Have you seen a loss of interest in biodefense research?
A: It’s clear that public interest in biodefense countermeasures has declined the further we get from the anthrax attacks of 2001. Media attention has shifted to pandemic influenza, but even that gets precious little air-time any longer as our country and our world face other crises such as the economy, political strife, food, fuel and so forth. However, as biodefense falls out of the spotlight, public awareness wanes. We in the industry need to be concerned about this. If there’s a lack of interest, this could easily be followed by a decrease in funding. Given the wide galaxy of potential threats, and how much it costs to develop a countermeasure against just one, there just isn’t enough funding to address every possible threat, even with a high level of public interest.

Q: How much does it cost to license a vaccine?
A: Experts at Tufts University Center for the Study of Drug Development said in a Fall 2007 report that it generally costs about $1 billion to develop a vaccine through early research to licensure, with a typical range between $800 million and $1.2 billion.

Q: How does a company obtain funding for biodefense research?
A: Getting new funding is a competitive process, and since the government (primarily the U.S. government) is generally the only customer, obtaining funding is under the auspices of government contracting regulations. First, the government determines what type of work it needs. Then companies in the industry respond to requests for proposals. DVC has been successful in this process by playing to our strengths, with strong technical proposals and industry-leading partners.


This is the first of a three-part Q&A series with Dr. House. Look for the second and third installments soon.

Related Links:

Learn more about Dr. Robert V. House, DVC President.

Read more about DVC's capabilities.

View additional biodefense resources.