Smallpox Research Activities: U.S. Interagency Collaboration, 2001

For the past 2 years, a team of investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has collaborated with scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Defense (DOD), academic centers, and international partners to undertake a research agenda on variola virus, the etiologic agent of smallpox. Objectives of the program derive from a 1999 Institute of Medicine report that addressed the scientific needs for live variola virus (1). Progress in addressing these objectives has been peer reviewed annually by both a select committee organized by CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research (2,3). A summary of accomplishments from the first year’s efforts was published in 2001 (4). The events of September 11, 2001, coupled with the use of Bacillus anthracis as a bioterrorist weapon of mass destruction, have substantially increased concerns that variola virus may be similarly used and have added a sense of urgency to production of a new smallpox vaccine and to carrying out the smallpox research agenda. This report provides an update on progress during 2001.