Cutting edge research and major biodefense breakthroughs continue to emerge from George Mason University’s Life Sciences Campus in Prince William County, Virginia.
Mason researchers investigating how the bacterium Francisella tularensis survives and thrives in the environment recently announced that they have determined how this disease causing bacteria survives in the wilderness.
Francisella tularensis, causes a disease commonly known as “Rabbit Fever.” While the disease is relatively rare - with about 100 cases reported in the United States in 2008 – it could pose a serious threat is used as bioterror weapon, According to GMU researchers
"It’s a naturally occurring disease, and the reason it makes a good weapon is that, unlike most bacteria, which require thousands or millions of organisms to cause disease, it only takes inhalation of between one to 10 Francisella tularensis bacteria to cause pneumonic tularemia," said Meghan Durham-Colleran, a researcher at GMU and one of the authors of the study in which the findings were presented. "Even though it might not cause a lot of deaths, it could cause a lot of panic because so many people could get it if it were to be released into the air."
"The ultimate goal of this research is to create a vaccine and better therapeutics that will make the population less vulnerable to this bioterror threat" said Monique van Hoek, assistant professor of molecular and microbiology at Mason’s National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases.
The study was supported by the Virginia Academy of Science, Mason’s National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases, the National Science Foundation and the Joint Science and Technology Office for Chemical and Biological Defense/Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
George Mason University's Life Sciences Campus anchors Prince William County's Innovation Technology Park. The 1,500 acre Innovation Technology park is home to the largest and fastest growing life sciences cluster in the Commonwealth of Virginia.