Construction on a $22 million home for some of the world’s most dangerous diseases – including black plague and dengue fever – began Wednesday in Fort Collins.
The new Colorado State University bio-hazard laboratory will house 15 research teams studying how to keep mosquitoes from transmitting deadly viruses and ways to vaccinate people against diseases that terrorists could release in a city.
Already rising at the site – nestled in a remote section of the city’s western foothills – is an $80-million federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention infectious-disease laboratory.
Together, the two facilities will transform Fort Collins into a hot spot for the study of bioterrorism and infectious diseases, especially those carried by insects and rodents.
“There’s no question” prestigious researchers will be attracted to Fort Collins, said Gerald Beltz, associate director of research at Harvard Medical School’s New England Regional Center in Boston.
“Investigators will go to the places where these facilities exist because they can begin their work right away,” he said.
The expense of turning a scientific laboratory into a “biosafety level 3” facility – safe for handling deadly bacteria and secure from theft – is prohibitive for most institutions, Beltz said.
Biosafety 3 facilities must have double-door entryways, special ventilation systems, medical oversight and a restricted entrance.
The CDC, currently operating out of a decades-old building near the new site, also protects its facility with armed guards.
Criminal backgrounds of visitors also are checked, said CDC regional director Lyle Peterson.
Nan Eckardt, president of the homeowners association for the neighborhood nearest to the site, said the group’s board members were not concerned about dangerous diseases being studied nearby, or the construction projects.
“We agreed it’s probably much better to have state-of- the-art new facilities,” Eckardt said.
Ken Olson, a microbiology professor at CSU, is one of the researchers who plans to work in the new university facility.
Olson studies viruses that cause encephalitis in people and animals. Some strains are potential bioweapons because they can be spread through air, he said.
There’s not enough safe space on campus for him to deliberately infect animals to study how the virus is transmitted.
“We would need to contain mosquitoes once they’re infected and make sure people working in the laboratory are safe,” he said.
Olson will be able to do that in the new building, he said.
The $22-million facility will be paid for mainly by a National Institute of Health grant.
Scientists planning to move into the new CSU facility – when completed in 2007 – are looking to launch new projects, said Ralph Smith, a university professor of microbiology, immunology and pathology.
Some, for example, will work with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes black plague, another potential weapon, Smith said.
Scientists from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana and North and South Dakota will be able to apply to spend time in CSU’s 33,850-square-foot facility, Smith said.
The university received an additional $40 million from the NIH this summer to hire new infectious disease faculty and support research, Smith said.
The $80-million CDC building, across the street from the CSU facility, is scheduled to open next summer with 15,600 square feet of space, much of it also classified as biosafety level 3, Smith said.
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
