Massive attack
future awaiting them is now so much worse. It also offers the challenge of when do you stop finding out information about that person? Dr Kuhlman agreed that it was problematic but that Battelle had looked at it internally: “Your DNA is the ultimate PII, and something that we fervently protect. Regulations are evolving as people in the legislature begin to realise what information is contained in the DNA. The information has always been there, now we can extract it. It is reaching a point where information could be available to insurance companies, who will decide that you have a genetic predisposition for this, so we won’t insure you for that, but we might for something else. That type of information available without the individual’s consent sounds like the ultimate civil liberties violation. I don’t know that we have the legal code built around this yet, the only thing that is certain is that more and more information will become apparent in people’s DNA as time goes on.” Dr Dickens stated that Battelle was
looking at this problem so closely that they had started hiring experts to help navigate it. “We are addressing this through our interface with the law enforcement community and we are working closely with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, and have established a MPS satellite lab in their Criminal Identification facility. We know there are certain markers to the human genome that indicate a predisposition to health effects, for instance there are lots of areas of the human mitochondria that forensic analysts are not allowed to look at as they have such a high mutation rate that points to significant disease. I have hired a leading expert on forensics from the FBI, he has been on my team for four years and used to run the lab in Quantico. I hired him not just for his expertise but his ability to understand the policies that govern what forensic labs and LE can look at and what they can’t. Whenever we develop algorithms and software for the forensic community we have to keep in mind there are only certain areas that we want to look at with MPS. We need to present it so the analysts only look at
the portion that’s permitted, rather than the whole thing so we can protect as much PII as possible.” One area that the team is also
looking at is the issue of agent ageing in soil. Once agent fate can be ascertained to a forensically useful level it becomes possible to say that these degradation products can be emphatically linked to this batch of sarin, for example, as only this batch has the exact compounds that would provide this signature. While the team is not there yet they are looking at a broad range of soils and other markers and trying to develop extraction techniques, among other things, to ensure that the sample extracted from the matrices is as clean as possible. Yet the big thing that Battelle is
working on is the functional genomic and computational assessment of threats (Fun GCAT) [Also known in the office as Fun GCATs Ho! Thundercats? Anyone? Ed.]. This IARPA-fundedproject is looking to ‘develop new approaches and tools for the screening of nucleic acid sequences, and for the functional annotation and characterisation of genes of concern, with the goal of preventing the accidental or intentional creation of a biological threat’. Essentially this is looking at the function of genes, rather than pathogens per se, and how sequences could be tweaked to turn something harmless into harmful. Battelle along with Harvard University, Signature Science, SRI International and Virginia Tech were chosen as prime contractors for the project, which will rely heavily on big data as well as analysis. Dr Kuhlman explained: “This work is aimed at predicting the function of de novo genetic sequences. It is one thing to chase down in the database and find that this thing produces this protein that does whatever. That is relatively standard. We only really understand what a minute fraction of DNA does. We are now looking at predicting phenotype from genotype and while IARPA recognises that this is a bit of a moon shot it is becoming feasible with machine learning technologies. It is data limited at the beginning, we have to pour everything we have into it and let the machine chew on it, to get to predict functions of new strands of DNA. That may be the most exciting project we are
doing at Battelle as far as long term implications are concerned. The ability that will provide in terms of personalised medicine and predicting a response to a specific insult or pathogen is phenomenal. To do that in a predictive sense and help transform biology from an observational to predictive and quantitative probabilistic science is an enormously interesting field.” “I use Zika as an example,” said Dr
Dickens. “Zika has been around for a long time and there are a lot of infections that run their course so you are back to normal after a couple of days. It’s only recently that it has mutated to cause microcephaly in babies. Could you use a probabilistic tool to look at those mutations early on and say ‘this is part of a new phenotype for this organism and can we develop countermeasures for this prior to it becoming a worldwide problem?’ We are also looking to develop tools to identify de novo synthesised genes and organisms, so if someone had recreated horsepox virus from scratch and you had one piece of that DNA could we have picked that up with our tool to say ‘someone is trying to recreate this virus?’” When all these elements are put
together you can see the future of medical countermeasures quite clearly. While it won’t stop people worrying about biological warfare agents it does provide a number of roadmaps to dealing with both existing pathogens and emerging infectious diseases. Dr Kuhlman explained: “We now are at a point where gene therapy medicine can actually begin to develop the promise of a decade or more ago. With things like CRISPR that allow you to modify genomes, and the tools we have through MPS and machine learning technology, as well as Fun GCAT where you can get the phenotype from this kind of gene, we will start seeing real applications of gene therapy. Previously it has been limited to the treatment of some very rare diseases but the fundamentals are now in place to allow development that will enable the community to apply gene therapy to more pervasive diseases. Maybe not in three to five years, and that would just be the development not the regulatory!”
CBRNe Convergence, Orlando, USA, 6-8 November 2018
www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2018 42 CBRNe WORLD February 2018
www.cbrneworld.com
CBRNeWORLD
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