Recent bioterrorist attacks may not only influence the content of future research studies, but the way those studies are reviewed, monitored, and published. On Dec. 6, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced several new initiatives intended to encourage basic research in bioterrorism-related areas. The initiatives, which expand on old programs and introduce new ones, will not be funded by "new" money, but rather via a reallocation of the $81.6 million in NIAID bioterrorism research funding allocated for FY2002 prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Among the top priorities, according to NIAID's director of the division of microbiology and infectious diseases, Carole Heilman: an improved anthrax vaccine, an alternative smallpox vaccine, alternative smallpox drugs, and new standardized animal models for evaluating such approaches. The initiatives (www.niaid.nih.gov/dmid/bioterrorism) also call for a "rapid response" grant program that accelerates the review of funding applications, cut down from a...
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