DoD Creating Virus-Fighting Viruses For Outbreak Emergency: Will “Evolve With Lethal Viruses As They Compete With Them”
Mac Slavo
July 20th, 2016
SHTFplan.com
The future of warfare is viral.
The U.S. military is now creating its own custom-made line of viruses that it hopes can be used to neutralize a deadly virus during an outbreak by out competing with it and reproducing enough times to overwhelm a strain like HIV, Zika or Ebola.
But early research also shows that the lab created, genetically-engineered “dud” viruses could interfere with DNA and trigger cancer, and unlike other therapeutics, will be evolving as it courses through.
For now, it’s future is still in the hands of military scientists. But the Department of Defense sees it as very promising.
via Bloomberg:
A pair of brothers working in laboratories on opposite coasts of the U.S. are brewing a new approach to fighting viruses, one that’s drawn interest from the military for protection against the threat of infections such as Zika and Ebola.
The experimental treatment pursued by Ariel Weinberger, a Harvard University biologist, and Leor Weinberger, a virologist at the University of California at San Francisco-affiliated Gladstone Institutes, deploys a tweaked, safe version of a virus to overwhelm the form that invades and kills cells. While it’s very early — the approach has only been tested in test tubes and animals — the U.S. government is ready to invest in developing the idea and seeing whether similar mutants can protect against other diseases.
[…]
The brothers are studying bits of genetic material called therapeutic interfering particles, or TIPs […] the Weinbergers have received funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for exploratory studies of TIPs, and in April DARPA issued a call for more proposals.
The Rest…HERE
