Children are known to be more radiation sensitive than adults, but insufficient data are available to quantify this increased sensitivity. This paper develops ED50 for hemapoietic injury in children from radiation, allowing improved pediatric casualty estimates.
This publication describes efforts to better estimate and understand human health outcomes following a nuclear event. Models were developed for cutaneous radiation injury from nuclear weapon fallout, including both ground-shine and direct skin contamination. These advanced injury models serve as a basis for future cutaneous injury studies.
Gryphon Scientific examined the detectability of internal contamination with radionuclides using external survey in Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport Code (MCNP) using sophisticated voxelized phantoms of the human body. Detectors were limited to hand-held survey meters to estimate the utility of external detection in mass-casualty incidents.
The U.S. policy landscape for countering biological threats is split into two main groups: 1) biosecurity, which specifically focuses on preventing theft, diversion, or deliberate malicious use of biological sciences knowledge, skills, materials, and technologies to cause harm; and 2) biodefense, which involves the development of capabilities and knowledge to assess, detect, monitor, respond to, and attribute biological threats. This project involved the first ever systems-based analysis of the entire U.S. biosecurity and biodefense policy landscape, which enabled greater understanding of the functional relationships between policies as of 2017. These analyses, along with reviews of methodologies for measuring policy implementation and historical case studies to better understand factors that lead to opportunity costs, informed the development of a roadmap for implementing biosecurity and biodefense policies that leverages science and technology advances and minimizes security risks. In addition to the roadmap, this study presents two analytic frameworks for evaluating policy implementation and analyzing opportunity costs.
Figure 1. This figure shows a relational map of U.S. biosecurity and biodefense policy by policy subject. Each white circle is a unique U.S. Code, international agreement or partnership, Executive or agency-level policy, program activity (if not already associated with a U.S. Code, international partnership, or agency-level policy), guidance, or guidelines. The colored circles signify subject area. The size of the nodes reflects the number of policies associated with each subject area and the distance between nodes reflects the degree to which policies are linked based on the underlying relational database. The lines reflect direct relationships between policies and subject areas based only on existing policies before 2018. This map does not reflect associations of subject area based on conceptual similarities, but rather associations by direct links between existing policies.
Figure 2. These objectives were derived from combining the core components of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 10/Biodefense for the 21st Century, Presidential Policy Directive 2/National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats, and other relevant policies. The science and technology categories (blue text) were derived from policy documents and funding announcements for research and development for biodefense. Similarly, the policy scope was derived from policy documents and discourse over the past 18 years.
Figure 3. This figure shows the potential indirect effects of U.S. biosecurity and biodefense policies on U.S. biodefense objectives. Each circle is a unique U.S. Code, international agreement or partnership, Executive or agency-level policy, program activity (if not already associated with a U.S. Code, international partnership, or agency-level policy), guidance, or guidelines. The white circles represent the direct biodefense objectives (columns) that policies in each of the subject area categories (rows) addresses. The colored circles indicate possible indirect effects of the policies in the subject area categories to biodefense objectives. The green circles indicate capability-building activities. The pink circles indicate requirements, the red circles indicate regulations, and the burgundy circles indicate restrictions, all of which seek to promote biosecurity and biosafety activities. The blue circles are policies that criminalize development and/or use of biological weapons or their delivery systems. Horizontal comparisons between the purpose of a policy (i.e., direct biodefense objective) and the potential indirect effects of a policy should be made.
Synthetic DNA can be used by researchers to acquire natural genes without the living source, enabling researchers to study the function of those genes without isolating them from a natural source. However, in the hands of a malicious actor, the technology could be used to acquire a harmful pathogen or toxin, creating a biosecurity risk. At the time our study was conducted in 2007, experts disagreed whether the risk warranted additional oversight of the custom, synthetic DNA industry (CSNA).
For over 10 years, Gryphon Scientific has managed NIAID’s ChemDB Database, a publicly available database with a diverse set of data describing the biological activity and chemical properties of small molecules with potential therapeutic applications for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Gryphon leads a team in a variety of tasks to maintain the database and facilitate use of the data, including literature surveillance, data abstraction, and advanced scientific analysis of drug development data. The database has been used by researchers at NIAID, across the U.S., and internationally for structure-activity relationship studies, virtual drug discovery, and other research to further discovery of therapeutics for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
In support of the public portion of ChemDB, the Gryphon team monitors public sources to identify literature describing small molecules with potential therapeutic applications for HIV and M. tuberculosis in the pre-clinical development stage, then abstracts complex chemical and biological data in a standardized fashion for addition to the database. In support of the proprietary portion of the database that includes confidential experimental data from NIAID partner laboratories, the Gryphon team performs literature reviews, advanced analysis of drug development data, and other support. ChemDB now contains more than 408,000 compounds from more than 32,000 references. Approximately 292,000 of these compounds are in the public dataset, and 115,000 compounds are in the proprietary dataset. Approximately 150,000 public compounds have associated anti-HIV data, 47,000 public compounds have associated anti-Mycobacterium tuberculosis data, and 111,000 public compounds have data on other pathogens. The database has been used by researchers at NIAID, across the U.S., and internationally to further drug discovery.
Gryphon Scientific performed a retrospective analysis of trends in HIV small molecule drug development over the last 35 years using data from the ChemDB database, published in the December 2020 issue of the Journal of AIDS & Clinical Research. The paper analyzes these data alongside data on NIH funding, U.S. Food and Drug Administration drug approvals, and new target identifications to explore the influences of these factors on anti-HIV drug discovery research. This analysis demonstrated that levels of research activities follow funding trends and that interest in HIV therapeutic research activities remains strong despite the increasingly wide suite of therapeutic options that have accumulated over the past few decades. The paper further evaluates the nuances in these trends and discuss implications for future research on HIV therapeutics and development of new therapeutics. The full publication can be read here.
Gryphon Authors: Dr. Froggi Jackson, Louise Sumner, Mikaela Finnegan, Dr. Emily Billings, Dr. Margaret Rush
In October 2014, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced a funding pause on selected “Gain of Function” (GoF) research involving influenza viruses, SARS coronavirus, and MERS coronavirus, namely experiments that are “reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route” (White House OSTP Moratorium Memo). OSTP called for a deliberative process to evaluate the risks and potential benefits of this research, which would culminate in the development and adoption of a new US Government (USG) policy governing the funding and conduct of GoF research and the cessation of the funding pause.
The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) served as the official federal advisory body on GoF research issues and was responsible for developing recommendations for the appropriate level of Federal oversight of GoF research. To inform the NSABB’s deliberations on this issue, Gryphon Scientific was contracted by the NIH Office of Science Policy to conduct risk and benefit assessments (RBA) of GoF research involving the pathogens subject to the funding pause. Our assessment was divided into four components:
Contained on this page are Gryphon’s final and draft reports to NIH OSP and NSABB, Gryphon’s presentations on the RBA, as well as Supplemental Information supporting the conclusions and findings in the report.
Following a mass casualty nuclear event, the ability to precisely determine an individual’s radiation exposure (biodose) is critical for the accurate identification of critically exposed individuals for treatment. To support the development of an accurate biodose tool, Gryphon Scientific developed a supervised machine learning pipeline to identify the most important biomarkers (miRNA and mRNA signals) for predicting radiation exposure. This work was performed in collaboration with the Experimental Therapeutics Section at the National institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI).
