An Everett laboratory will help test medicine that could be used to treat survivors of a nuclear attack.
SNBL USA won a federal contract to be one of the laboratories in a pool used to determine what medicine would be best to treat radiation poisoning.
“God forbid if it’s ever needed, but, if it is needed, I’m glad we’ve done it,” said Mark Crane, SNBL’s vice president of business development.
The contract is up to $20 million a year for the next five years. To gear up for the work, SNBL has added 40 workers in the past three months and is expected to hire another 20 to 30, Crane said. After the company finishes hiring, SNBL expects to employ 350.
While millions of people could die if a nuclear attack occurred on American soil, millions more could be exposed to varying levels of radiation, depending on their distance from the blast.
“Everybody is going to assume that the government is prepared for this,” Crane said. “The truth of the matter is the government is preparing.”
To do the work, the laboratory is expected to expose animals from mice and rats to pigs to monkeys with levels of radiation to determine how effective the medicine could be to treat survivors.
SNBL works hard to minimize the pain and suffering of the animals, said Ken Gordon, executive director of the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research.
“I think everyone in the business, if we could find alternatives to using animals in research, we would jump at that chance, but we don’t have that as an alternative at the moment,” Gordon said.
Like all laboratories that do animal testing, SNBL has a committee of scientists and community members that determines if the work can only be done on animals, the appropriate number of animals to use and what can be done for their care, he said.
SNBL is owned by Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories of Japan. The company opened in Everett in 1999 and the lab currently sits on a 29-acre site talong Seaway Boulevard. A Shinto shrine stands outside, honoring animals used in research.
This will be the first federal contract for SNBL. The contract is through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Federal officials are trying to determine what would happen if a nuclear explosion occurs in America. One of the scenarios being examined is if a 10-megaton bomb blew up in Manhattan.
“All those people who have seen the flash, they all think they’ve been exposed to high levels of radiation and they think they’re all going to die,” Crane said. “They’re not.”
People who suffer from enough radiation poisoning go through stages of sickness.
The first is called the blood syndrome, where a survivor loses all of their white blood cells and loses the ability to produce more. That makes them more at risk for infection.
In the Manhattan scenario, people and cars on the street would be buried under five to six feet of broken glass falling from the skyscrapers damaged during the blast.
“You’ve got cuts from glass and bricks, you’ve probably got a broken arm or a broken leg,” Crane said. “So chances are excellent that you’ll be exposed to an infection.”
What medication is best used to help those people who have cuts and whose white blood cells were obliterated? Most of the work will involve existing drugs that can be used in new ways.
One drug already determined to be useful is Neupogen made by Bothell’s Amgen. (The firm has since closed its Bothell and Seattle campuses.) The University of Maryland conducted the tests to determine that the drug is beneficial.
“The government is being pretty smart here,” Crane said. “They’re most interested in drugs that are already on the market for a new application.”
Now the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is determining what other drugs could help with initial radiation sickness or later syndromes when the intestines degrade or tumors form in the lungs.
The federal agency contracted with five laboratories across the U.S. for the research.
As more drugs are tested, each laboratory will bid on the work. SNBL doesn’t know how much work it will be contracted to do.
Crane said that he expected that SNBL will be awarded several studies. How many animals will be used in the testing won’t be known until the lab is awarded the studies.
The laboratory has added or is hiring animal husbandry technicians, clinical pathologists, study directors and veterinary technicians.
The company has also hired support staff in IT and accounting.
The federal government did research into how to prepare for a nuclear attack during the Cold War. After the Cold War ended, research dried up, Crane said.
When the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred, federal authorities started worrying about what could happen if a weapon of mass destruction went off.
The research conducted during the Cold War is outdated; Crane likens it to technology used 30 to 40 years ago versus what’s used today.
“We don’t have the emergency kit, ‘In case of nuclear attack, open this box,’” Crane said. “That doesn’t exist.”
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