Modernization of high and maximum containment research facilities at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) to meet current and future national research priorities - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) at Boston University (BU) was established to generate essential information about new and reemerging infectious pathogens and the diseases they cause, to facilitate development of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics, and to train future generations of scientists to safely study pathogens with pandemic potential. It is one of two National laboratories housing both high (Biosafety Level 3) and maximum (Biosafety Level 4) containment labs established by the National Institute of Health (NIH) at academic medical centers as part of the Biodefence Research Program. Increasing frequency of new and reemerging high consequence pathogens causing human (and animal) diseases and the limited availability of proven safe and effective medical countermeasures highlight the need to improve operational efficiency for research on Risk Group 3 pathogens. NEIDL was designed in 2003, completed in 2008, and approved for containment research in 2018. Shortly after research operations had begun, NEIDL investigators were faced with the need to urgently pivot to work on the new pandemic pathogen, SARS-CoV-2. This effort revealed infrastructure deficiencies in the facility that impeded research flexibility, reduced operational efficiency and turnaround time between studies, limited the number of pathogens and arthropod vectors that could be investigated concurrently, and slowed scientific productivity and the development of essential medical countermeasures and diagnostics. The following three modernization goals identified will significantly improve our ability to manage the facility and better meet these future research needs: Goal 1. Modify Biosafety Level (BSL)-3 and Animal Biosafety Level (ABSL)-3 spaces to facilitate individual room isolation for decontamination and essential maintenance, allowing uninterrupted work in other BSL-3/ABSL-3 areas. Updating the original room air pressure control systems will preclude inadvertent positive pressurization of adjacent spaces, while the installation of additional in-parallel high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter housings will increase capacity for extended or phased Risk Group 3 studies in animals and room by room annual maintenance and certification. Goal 2. Renovate Arthropod Containment (High) Level space to add capacity for tick research and permit concurrent mosquito vector studies, facilitate direct vector-to-host transmission studies in animal models of human disease, and improve vector biosecurity when doors are opened and closed. Goal 3. Modernize and convert the BSL-4 air locks to MicroChem as an option to gaseous phase decontamination to reduce the required process time from days to minutes and expedite turnaround time for studies to resume.
