Scientists and safety experts told campus and communit members last week that a biocontainment laboratory is needed on the West Coast to research vaccines and treatments and to protect the public health.

California, they said, faces increased threats from emerging diseases such as West Nile virus, hantavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

“As these new diseases emerge,” said Richard Pollard, chief of infectious diseases at UC Davis Medical Center, “we run the risk of having very different epidemics occur.”

Pollard and the other scientists noted that a biosafety level 4 laboratory like the one proposed by UC Davis would allow public health officials to respond quickly to suspected disease outbreaks in the western part of the United States. Currently, researchers have to send pathogens to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, causing potentially critical delays in responding to disease outbreaks.

UC Davis invited the campus and community to participate in four public workshops, held April 9-10 on campus, regarding the proposed laboratory. Attendees were briefed on safety measures and research activities envisioned for a National Institutes for Health National Biocontainment Laboratory on the campus.

In holding the forums, the university is continuing its efforts to engage the community in a discussion of the proposed facility. The NIH will likely announce its decision in early fall. In February, UC Davis officials submitted an application to the NIH to construct the lab on campus.

Some attendees at the forums questioned whether the 300,000-square-foot lab would be risk-free and if classified research for military purposes would be conducted there.

Lee Thompson, a biosafety expert at the University of Texas who has designed biosafety level 4 facilities throughout the world, explained that the UC Davis lab would be built with the strictest security system of any lab in the country. Researchers would have to pass through 11 layers of security before entering the high-containment portion of the lab. Electronic biometrics devices would be used to screen their faces for identity purposes.

“All doors are bio-sealed and interlocked,” Thompson added.

Barry Klein, vice chancellor for research, said that the facility would be an academic research center for open, published peer-reviewed scientific studies and not a secretive installation for classified research. “No agenda exists to have classified research done at this facility,” he said.

The campus has proposed to build the lab near the intersection of Interstate 80 and Highway 113. However, officials from West Sacramento, Yuba and Sacramento counties have expressed an interest in possibly locating the facility in their communities. Scientists from UC Davis, Stanford University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and other universities are expected to work at the lab, if it is approved.

Fred Murphy, a dean emeritus of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and former director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said the recent outbreak of SARS is a perfect example of why the West Coast needs a bio lab at UC Davis. “This is the world we live in,” Murphy said.

Murphy said benefits the lab would bring include new advances in public health, an ability to better study and control serious disease outbreaks, and the efficiency generated by not having to ship specimens to East Coast laboratories for analysis.

Pollard said it is not practical to locate the lab in a remote region. Science is a highly collaborative process, he explained. Researchers need to be near patients at hospitals and other scientists and research centers. He described the role of the NIH and the federal government as one of “oversight and not direction.”

Jim MacLachlan, a professor at the UC Davis veterinary medicine school and director of the Salick Equine Viral Disease Laboratory, said that West Nile virus poses a serious risk if left unchecked. “This is a new disease for North America with no human vaccine. We simply do not yet have the facility to study the virus,” he said.

Jon Crane, an architect who has designed high-security labs across the country, said the lab would be built on an established “box-within-a-box-within-a-box” principle. An airtight design would filter air exiting the lab to remove all viruses, bacteria and fungi. Wastewater and solid waste would be heat-treated to kill any infectious agents. Several layers of highly solid walls and state-of-the-art security systems would make the lab formidable for any type of outside penetration.

Thompson said that the shipment of infectious materials is governed by strict national and international rules. Infectious samples are shipped in sealed capsules that are packed in unbreakable, watertight plastic or metal containers. These containers, in turn, are placed in a Styrofoam box that fits inside a larger shipping box. From transportation issues to the lab’s physical construction, Thompson said, an abundance of “redundant systems” throughout the complex will guard against human error and other possible incidents.

In response to an audience member’s questions, Thompson said it’s not a “fair comparison” to liken the UC Davis biolab to Soviet-era bio labs. The designs and security systems at the facility UC Davis is proposing are vastly superior to and different from Soviet facilities built almost 30 years ago with “bio-weapons” purposes, he said.

The workshops followed an Academic Senate forum earlier in the week in which faculty members discussed the pros and cons of the proposed facility. The faculty body has not taken a formal position on the lab.