Thomas O'Brien, Beverly Mangold, Bob
Blase (who joined the company after its founding) and Bill Nelson.
A suspicious package discovered three
years ago in the mail room of B'nai B'rith's Washington headquarters
sparked fears of biological terrorism. Authorities had no way to
quickly tell if the oozing red substance found in a Manila envelope
at the Jewish community organization was really the deadly bacterium
anthrax, as its label indicated. Thus, workers were barricaded in
their offices for more than eight hours, two city blocks were shut
down and two employees were stripped to their underwear and hosed
with chemicals on the sidewalk. In the end, the incident turned out
be a hoax--scientists analyzed the material and discovered it to
be a common household bacterium. But such hoaxes helped spawn a Maryland
biotechnology company that's developing tools to prevent panicked
reactions to the specter of biological attack. Bill Nelson, Thomas
O'Brien, Gary Long and Beverly Mangold were part of the team of scientists
at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda called on to
analyze the suspicious material during the B'nai B'rith incident.
Two years ago, the four colleagues pulled together $100,000 to start
Tetracore LLC, a Gaithersburg company that makes devices to detect
agents of biological warfare and infectious diseases such as anthrax,
plague and smallpox. Tetracore, whose founders helped the U.S. military
inspect biological weapons sites in Iraq, makes detection tools for
hazardous materials response teams, known as HazMat units, which
would be first on the scene in situations involving biological and
chemical attack. The company, which has not taken money from outside
investors, generated about $400,000 in revenue last year and expects
to make $3 million this year, according to Nelson. The company now
has 25 employees and just moved into new offices in Gaithersburg.
Tetracore makes two kinds of diagnostic tools to detect deadly germs. Its Bio-Threat Alert test
strips, which work like home pregnancy tests, let emergency response
teams know if a disease agent is present within minutes. The test strip
is a small plastic device in which a sample of a questionable substance
is placed. The device contains anthrax antibodies, proteins produced to
combat the anthrax bacterium. If anthrax is present, it binds to the
antibodies and causes a white paper strip to change colors. "This
gives them an opportunity to quickly pick up material and analyze
it," Nelson said. "If it is anthrax, they could quickly take
the necessary measures." So far, the company has designed a test
for anthrax, or Bacillus anthracis, a livestock bacterium that can be
deadly when inhaled by humans. It has developed a proprietary method to
make the anthrax antibodies using cells from mice. It is making similar
test strips for other disease agents such as ricin, botulinum toxin and
plague. The company also develops DNA-based tests that detect the agents
by recognizing their genetic sequences. The genetic tests, meant to be
used alongside the test strips, are much more sensitive than the strips
and can detect bacteria long after death. They are similar to the tests
Nelson, Long and O'Brien used when they helped the United Nations
Special Commission inspect Iraqi biological weapons facilities after the
Persian Gulf War. "Even though they had stopped producing anthrax a
long time ago, they couldn't get rid of all the evidence," Nelson
said. In recent years, fear of biological attacks has been growing among
public officials, afraid that disease agents will get into the hands of
terrorists and be deliberately released on the public. Fears were stoked
in 1995 when Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo released the deadly nerve gas
sarin in the Tokyo subway system. The group had previously made several
attempts to use anthrax and other toxins. In 1996, after the Oklahoma
City bombing, Congress passed the Domestic Preparedness Program to train
public safety and health-care workers to react to terrorist attacks. In
addition to the potential for biological attack, officials are concerned
about the growing number of hoaxes like the one at Washington's B'nai
B'rith building. Montgomery County recently purchased about two dozen of
Tetracore's test strips for anthrax. Theodore Jarboe, the county's fire
marshal, said rapid testing devices are essential in dealing with
potential biological attacks. "Time is critical when you're dealing
with the release of a biological agent that could be harmful to
people," Jarboe said. "The sooner we know if a substance
is present or not, the quicker we can determine the best course of
action to manage the incident."
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
