By Katie Pawlosky, National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility Communications Director, October 2022
The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility has an exceptional mission that prioritizes safety and health. This mission is driven by people who have a passion for making the world a better and safer place, much like our colleagues at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in New York.
While the team at Plum Island has done more to protect this nation’s agriculture than anyone will probably ever know, there is some essential work that cannot be done in Plum’s biosafety level-2 and 3 laboratories: Research on zoonotic and emerging diseases that require the highest level of biocontainment, biosafety level-4, or BSL-4.
Zoonotic diseases are diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans. Emerging diseases are those that are newly recognized in a population, or already exist and are rapidly increasing in a specific geographic range.
NBAF’s BSL-4 containment spaces incorporate the highest level of safety and security features to safely understand these high-consequence pathogens. Specifically, these BSL-4 spaces will be able to house large livestock. This capability is a first in our nation. In fact, there are only four other facilities that can do this work in the entire world.
With NBAF’s unique capabilities, the U.S. Department of Agriculture created a new unit called the Zoonotic and Emerging Disease Research Unit, or ZEDRU, to better understand these diseases in large livestock and how to mitigate them.
“As a community, we have not paid enough attention to the risks posed by viruses jumping from animals to people, from humans to animals or from animals to animals,” said Dr. Lisa Hensley, ZEDRU research leader at NBAF. “The security of our food supply is an incredible vulnerability to our public health and agricultural health, and we need to be proactive in this area.”
Dr. Hensley has more than 24 years of experience working in containment with several types of zoonotic and emerging diseases. Before coming to NBAF, Hensley worked for the National Institutes of Health’s Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick as the assistant director for science in BSL-4. Hensley also has helped with outbreak response and response research to public health emergencies, which included outbreaks of Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, and Ebola in Africa.
Dr. Hensley was drawn to working with these types of diseases early in her college career. In the 1980s, cases of HIV and AIDS were rising at catastrophic rates, and little could be done if a person was diagnosed. Since HIV is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids, individuals who needed blood transfusions or blood products for medical reasons — such as those with hemophilia — were at risk of contracting HIV.
Hemophilia, a medical condition that reduces the blood’s ability to clot from even the most minor injury, affects many in Hensley’s family including her father. Since hemophilia was treated with a concentrated blood product to help wounds stop bleeding, he also was at risk of contracting HIV. Home from her freshman year in college, Hensley asked her parents if they would get tested for HIV since they had a high chance of contracting the disease. They both decided not to get tested, given there was no great option for treatment.
“This was the moment of impact for me,” Hensley said. “Imagine if we had been better at picking up the disease before it had become widespread across the human population or before it contaminated our blood supply.”
Hensley decided to work with zoonotic and emerging diseases to study how viruses jump species and how to stop them or get ahead of the curve. Over her career, she has developed many skills working in the lab and in endemic parts of the world. She has seen the effects of devastating pathogens and as a result, she has a greater appreciation for viruses that can jump species.
This level of commitment and passion for serving a mission greater than self is a common attribute for many NBAF employees. And every individual’s role at NBAF is essential to our mission. This unique mission cannot be achieved without our operational employees who are behind the scenes every day making sure each component of the facility is working properly.
As I write this, dedicated personnel from USDA, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the construction contractors are meticulously finishing up testing all the facilities systems. As DHS NBAF Program Manager Tim Barr said in our article last month, “Both DHS and USDA have made commitments regarding the safety of this facility, and we will uphold those commitments by ensuring the facility is ready to support research operations in a safe manner.”