Funding the Impossible a Specialty for DARPA
Is soybean oil the answer to biological terrorism?
A few years ago, James Baker, a University of Michigan physician, created microscopic bubbles of soy oil within a water-oil emulsion--like a briskly shaken bottle of salad dressing. These tiny bubbles store tremendous energy, he claims, enough to “explode” and kill anthrax spores--on surfaces or within the bodies of infected mice.
The milky-white substance works equally well on a devil’s pantry of biological weapons, from salmonella to the Ebola virus, Baker says.
But to move the idea out of the test tube, Baker needed money. That’s where the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Department bureau that funds most of the nation’s biomedical research against terrorism, stepped in.
About $12 million and four years later, Baker has set up a firm to commercialize his invention, and he’s already done animal experiments that suggest it could be used as a protective nasal spray against anthrax infection.
Since 1996, DARPA has funded scores of small research projects to combat biological warfare, including potential drugs, vaccines and detection gadgets.
“DARPA [has] funded things that a lot of people thought were ridiculous, and some that people thought were impossible,” said Harvard University pathologist Donald Ingber, a onetime DARPA contractor. “They make things happen, [and] there are a lot of exciting things in the pipeline.”
The agency’s budget was more than $2 billion in the previous fiscal year; $167 million of that went to biowarfare defense. DARPA requested $140 million for the current year, though that could be increased by recent federal anti-terrorism allocations, said Jan Walker, an agency spokesperson.
Created as U.S. Reaction to Sputnik
The agency was created in 1958 after the Soviet Union stunned the world by launching the Sputnik satellite, taking the lead in the space race. DARPA was intended to help the U.S. regain technical supremacy, and its projects have helped jump-start some of the most important scientific developments of the postwar era--including the Internet and stealth technology that hides planes from radar.
For years DARPA has funded plenty of high-risk experiments that traditional health agencies wouldn’t touch. Many of the farfetched projects never panned out, such as a chemically active clothing that kills microbes on contact, or drugs designed to treat any kind of inflammation caused by biological weapons.
“We can call into question whether [DARPA] makes the best use of government funds. Unfortunately, we have the extreme conservatism of the [National Institutes of Health] on one hand and groups like DARPA, who go to the other extreme,” said Steven Block, a Stanford University biophysicist who advises the government on biowarfare. “A good deal of research falls between the cracks.”
Citing national security concerns, DARPA officials declined to discuss specifics of its biological weapons defense projects.
Still, some success stories seem to validate the agency’s entrepreneurial approach.
In 1997, Cepheid Inc. was a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based biotech start-up with a few brainy PhDs and a big idea. The company thought it could build a device to detect the presence of hundreds of germs within 30 minutes, by analyzing each microbe’s DNA, or genetic blueprint.
DARPA gave the then-tiny company more than $5 million, reasoning that such a device would be able to detect biological warfare agents rapidly in the field.
Since then, Cepheid has sold about 100 early versions of the machine to biodefense agencies and says it will deliver a battlefield-ready device to an eager military later this year. Although Cepheid remains a small company with sales of only $3 million in its last quarter, its stock price has quadrupled since Sept. 11.
“[The DARPA contract] was crucial because it helped us define what the company was all about: advanced pathogen detection,” said Kurt Petersen, Cepheid’s president. “DARPA is so effective at giving very early technologies the spurt to get them over the edge, to make them important.”
Albert Pisano, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley and a former DARPA program officer, said the agency “looks for all those gorgeous but technically risky projects that might not succeed, in order to know exactly the state of the art.”
The usual progression from basic biological research to a final product is ponderously slow--a process that may provide little immediate relief as anthrax in the mail has become a macabre reality. So DARPA funds many biological projects at $1 million to $3 million per year--more than most awards by federal health agencies--to push the process faster.
The agency is “supposed to make revolutionary leaps forward,” said Walker, DARPA’s spokesperson. “We make the goals and objectives of the programs very ambitious” and freely kill projects that don’t measure up.
Accused of Having a Short Attention Span
But some critics say DARPA’s twitchy moves from one research trend to the next can be monumentally wasteful.
Michael R. Hoffmann, a professor of environmental science at Cal Tech, received funds from the agency to build a gas mask that would protect against microbes and gas in relative comfort, unlike today’s cumbersome models. The project is still touted on DARPA’s Web site, although the contract was cut off 18 months ago along with a number of others on personal protective gear, Hoffmann said.
“It was kind of shocking. We had a lot of success,” Hoffman said. “They didn’t think it was a major issue anymore. DARPA’s like that. . . . [It has] a short attention span.”
Pisano calls such impatience DARPA’s great strength--ensuring that only the most fruitful efforts continue. For critics of the agency, such ruthlessness seems understandable given that some DARPA contractors are obscure.
But even the most promising of unconventional projects may lose their DARPA funding.
Stephen Albert Johnston, a University of Texas biochemist, used a DARPA grant to begin work on an “assembly line for vaccine production,” based partly on the creation of a generic vaccine system that could protect against many different diseases. He believes his work can lead to the development of vaccines in days instead of years.
But since Johnston’s DARPA grant expired, the work has languished.
“DARPA funded these projects because they were strategically important,” Johnston said. “The problem [is that] once you’ve made something that might be useful, how do you get . . . the Department of Defense to put it to use?”
Even the soy oil product that may have promise as an anthrax decontaminant for tanks, clothing or even post office conveyors is now in a holding pattern.
“DARPA knows most things will fail,” said Harvard’s Ingber. “But one or two things are going to change the world--or at least take the first step.”
