The target – fast identification of chemical warfare agents

The target – fast identification of chemical warfare agents

Illustration Photo Credit - IDF Spokesman

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

Illustration Photo Credit - IDF Spokesman
Illustration Photo Credit – IDF Spokesman

For more than fifty years, researchers have been studying exactly how aspirin affects the human body. Despite thousands of publications on the topic, our understanding is still incomplete.

Meanwhile, novel chemical and biological weapons have historically been mass produced within a year of discovery. Using current methods and technologies, researchers would require decades of study to gain a robust understanding of how new threat agents exert effects on human biological systems.

A DARPA release reports that that capability gap leaves U.S. forces vulnerable, so DARPA’s new five-year program, Rapid Threat Assessment (RTA), sets an aggressive new goal for researchers: develop methods and technologies that can, within thirty days of exposure, map the complete molecular mechanism through which a threat agent alters biochemical processes in human cells. The developed technologies must identify the cellular components and mechanistic events that take place over a range of times, from the milliseconds immediately following exposure to the threat agent, to the days over which alterations in gene and protein expression might occur. The molecular mechanism must also account for molecular translocations and interactions that cross the cell membrane, cytoplasm and nucleus.

www.i-hls.com

Details of the program are available here. DARPA will host a Proposers’ Day on 21 May.

Threat agents, drugs, chemicals, and biologic interfere with normal cell function by interacting with one or more molecules associated with the cell membrane, cytoplasm or nucleus. Since a human cell may contain up to 30,000 different molecules functioning together in complex, dynamic networks, the molecular mechanism of a given threat agent might involve hundreds of molecules and interactions. The technologies sought by RTA would identify the molecular targets of threat agents and the complex interactions that follow.

“Introducing a threat agent into a cell sets off a chain of interactions that propagate throughout the cell much like the pattern of ripples that result from throwing a pebble into a pond,” said Pallotta.

“Unfortunately, current research tends to be highly specialized, examining effects on very specific proteins or lipids and so on, which is why a drug like morphine is still being studied almost 200 years after its introduction. For this reason, DARPA is demanding a comprehensive approach that identifies all of the affected components and interactions at once against a background of inherent complexity.”