By Dave Parks, Associated Press
Birmingham, AL – Consider the tiny nanometer. A towering basketball player like Shaquille O'Neal is 2,160,000,000 nanometers tall. A common hair measures 100,000 nanometers across.
And a lethal flu virus is about 400 nanometers in diameter.
So there are very few places with the safety equipment needed to handle these microscopic, bad bugs. Southern Research Institute in Birmingham's medical district is one of them.
James and Diana Noah, who are married and also two top influenza scientists at the institute, are deeply involved in efforts by the government and pharmaceutical companies to develop new vaccines and treatments to protect the public from the dreaded bird flu now sweeping through Asia.
Much of the research could also end up helping people cope with the usual garden variety of influenza viruses that strike every winter.
"We work with live virus," said James Noah. And that includes the bird flu virus.
Southern Research has a biosafety level 3 lab that makes this research possible, Noah said. Inside the containment lab, scientists dress in protective suits, breathe through respirators and pass through a decontamination system when they leave.
Diana Noah focuses on vaccine development, and that involves the analysis of serum samples taken from people in research trials under way to create new vaccines. Serum tests show whether a vaccine has created an immune response that would confer protection.
"We are the primary source of this screening for human trials done by the U.S. government," said Noah, who leads a team of 14 scientists working on the vaccine project.
Meanwhile, James Noah focuses on drug development, using Southern Research's high-volume testing system to screen millions of compounds to find chemicals that are effective against influenza.
Those compounds could end up being tested in humans and lead to new drugs. "We are finding things here," Noah said.
But it's like trying to hit a moving target, he explained.
"The problem is the influenza virus is a very sneaky virus," he said. "It is able to mutate rapidly."
Thus, antiviral drugs and vaccines can quickly lose their effectiveness, something that medical authorities fear is now occurring with the front-line influenza drug Tamiflu.
Much of this has to do with the basic nature of a virus. There is a reason they are so small. Viruses don't have to carry all the biological necessities of life as we know it.
Unlike bacteria and other living things, a virus is unable to respire, replicate, consume and metabolize on its own.
"It needs to steal the machinery of a host, like a parasite essentially," Noah said. "So a virus can replicate, but only with the help of a living cell."
In recent years scientists have found ways to actually create viruses in the lab. This allows researchers to manipulate the composition of viruses and test new drugs and vaccines in anticipation of new types of influenza.
"We do that by making mutant influenzas and assessing their replication rate and their effect on the cell," Diana Noah said. "It's pretty straightforward."
For instance, scientists took this approach when they replicated the flu virus that caused the horrific 1918 pandemic, which killed tens of millions of people worldwide. "That has gleaned a lot of scientific information that has been beneficial to the public," James Noah said.
Scientists found that the 1918 virus was so lethal because it triggered a powerful immune response, especially in middle-aged and younger people.
"That immune response caused the cells of the body to attack themselves," he said.
Southern Research is also collaborating with the University of Alabama at Birmingham on viral research.
Scientists from both institutions are examining how viral components interact with people, and they are looking for already approved drugs to see if they can be used to disrupt those interactions, Noah said.
All this work on flu viruses is consuming for the Noahs, but viruses have a way of getting under your scientific skin.
"They are frightening in some respects, but they are fascinating," James Noah said.