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Newsletter:  May 2002/ Issue 2
Former Weapons Scientists Team with Lab to Fight Cancer

For the past year, former chemical and biological weapons scientists from Russia have been collaborating with staff at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to identify a cure for cancer. Cooperation has been under the Initiative for Proliferation Prevention (IPP), a federal program to transition Russia’s nuclear, chemical and biological scientists to commercial ventures, and in the process, strengthen global security. Since 1995, the Department of Energy (DOE) has invested approximately $25 to $35 million a year in the program, finding commercial employment for former weapons scientists, and pairing institutes in Russia and other Newly Independent States (NIS) with industrial partners willing to financially contribute to the development of potentially commercially viable products.

“I’m both excited by the program and a really strong advocate of the program,” says Dick Weller, of PNNL, where he is a senior scientist. He and colleague, Jim Morris, have been collaborating with Russian scientists from the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biology in Moscow to identify and enhance the cancer fighting properties that are found in garlic. The research is part of a project under IPP to promote collaborative work between the DOE national laboratories and former weapons scientists in NIS institutions. The program also exists to partner NIS scientists and their institutes with commercial entities in the United States in order to facilitate the transition of technologies from discovery, to a marketable product, and, ultimately, to manufacturing for sale.

“In my opinion, the advantage of IPP over other Russian (and NIS) assistance programs is that it builds on lab-to-lab and personal relationships… which is what will really sustain trust and transparency over time,” says Weller. Another important aspect of the program is that it helps to establish legitimacy and recognition for many NIS scientists who were, for decades, unable to publish their research in the open literature and receive direct credit for their work.

PNNL is the technical lead for many biological and chemical related projects under IPP, and, currently, PNNL scientists are collaborating with NIS colleagues on several projects. The project that Weller and Morris have been working on has made great progress over the last year. The Russian-American team chemically separated garlic extract and tested its various components for cancer killing properties. Upon identifying the components with this cyto-toxic ability, they identified the lowest concentration of those components that still demonstrated high levels of cyto-toxic activity. The most promising components were then crystallized.

At this point, computational biology tools were used to study the structure of each cyto-toxic component and model how it might be altered to make it more effective. Based on these structural predictions, variations of the original chemical structure were synthesized and tested. The outcome was the successful achievement of a higher level of cyto-toxic activity than possessed by the parent compounds.

The next phase of the IPP program entails pairing the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biology with a US commercial entity in order to pursue product development. If all goes as planned, a final product will be created and the partnership will move to its final stage, in which both the Institute and the

commercial investor can capitalize on the work accomplished by manufacturing and marketing the product themselves, or selling the rights to do so.

“Some institutes have really caught on to the vision of entrepreneurship and may chose to develop the product themselves,” says Weller. “Others may choose to license the technology completely to another institute or company in hopes of creating a… consistent revenue stream in return.”

New Horizons Diagnostic Corporation, of Columbia, Maryland, is one company that is presently participating with PNNL in IPP. New Horizons has spent $1.25 million per year on five different projects. The company hopes to hit the market with some of its collaborative products as soon as this year. One of its products is a device to detect bacteria in food processing plants, restaurants and hospitals, using natural luciferin/luciferase, enzymes that are extracted from fireflies and which glow in the presence of bacteria.

Another company is DyeSeed, a local seed processing and production company that has worked with PNNL and Russian scientists from Biochimmash, a former Soviet weapons development center and Moscow State University on two IPP projects. One is with a plant growth stimulant that has shown good progress in increasing growth rates for grasses and many broad-leaf plants. The other project is seeking to address the issue of soil remediation through investigation of the use of oil-eating microbes at oil contaminated sites.

“We couldn’t do any of this without the laboratory and IPP,” said Steve Stilson, Dye Seed general manager. “The preliminary test results for these projects are very promising. If the field tests show potential, it would be beyond my wildest dreams.”

Also, PNNL and Russian scientists are pursuing treatments for individuals exposed to biological agents such as anthrax and the plague. During the cold war, the former Soviet Union had a sizeable chemical and biological weapons program that included extensive work with infectious agents for which there are currently no treatments. Periodically, individuals were accidentally exposed to these agents, resulting in a high level of familiarity and experience in dealing with such situations by scientists of the former Soviet Union. These scientists spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to understand the components of such agents and what makes them so destructive. This knowledge makes them very attractive partners for projects involving chemical and biological technologies.

According to PNNL’s IPP Program Manager, Ron Nesse, NIS scientists are highly motivated and have been eager to participate in the program from the beginning. “The only thing they lack is what the commercial partner brings… There’s not an awful lot of natural knowledge and synergy between a US company and a Russian lab. We serve as a middle person,” quotes the Potomac Tech Journal.

“Because of its (IPP) commercial focus once you successfully complete a project and obtain a viable product at a particular institution… it stimulates a lot of enthusiasm to develop the next product,” Weller adds to the subject. “This demonstrates how the skills of scientists can be transferred to the commercial market, encouraging further movement by FSU scientists and institutes in that direction.

“The skills are there,” says Weller. “I’ve seen some amazing resumes and technical reports.”