The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded five contracts to different organizations to develop approaches to identify changes in individual’s genomes that would indicate their exposure to weapons of mass destruction.
The contractors and their award amounts are: Arizona State Univ., $9.1 million; Battelle Memorial Institute, $565,000; Duke Univ., $4.5 million; Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, $27.1 million; and The Salk Institute, $4.8 million.
The contracts are the base funding levels for the first phase of the Epigenetic Characterization and Observation (ECHO) program, with the goal being to reduce the threat of WMD.
“ECHO technology would work by quickly reading an individual’s epigenome—a part of human biology that helps our body respond to the constantly changing world around us—and identifying the epigenetic signatures indicative of WMD, precursor, or infection disease exposure,” says Dr. Eric Van Gieson, a program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office, in a brief description of the project on the agency’s website. “Though a person’s underlying genetic code is stable, life events can leave discernible marks on the genome that modify how genes are expressed.”
Based on the Phase One results, DARPA will assess each teams’ progress, and based on available funding, decide which options to exercise to support subsequent phases of the program, an agency spokesman tells HSR.
Van Gieson says that the contractors will create a man-portable device for use in the field that can analyze a biological sample of an individual within 30 minutes to identify epigenetic signatures from WMD.
“By the end of the program, DARPA’s plans to demonstrate ECHO capabilities in a man-portable device that could be used by an operator in austere settings with only minimal training,” he says. Current laboratory processes on average take two days to produce a result.
Battelle said its contract is for four years and is part of an Associated Contractor Agreement. The non-profit company said that under its award it “will examine blood samples from people known to have handled materials associated with biological, chemical, explosive, pesticide or herbicide contaminants and compare those results to control subjects who have not handled these materials to identify unique epigenome signatures.”
In addition to testing for exposure to WMDs, the system developed under ECHO will also enable diagnoses of illnesses, Battelle said.
“We’ll be developing methods to identify these signatures and how to interpret them for attribution, what did the person handle, when and for how long,” Dr. Rachel Spurbeck, a biologist with the company and principal research scientist, said in a statement. “This will even allow for diagnosing illnesses in individuals as a result of their exposure.”
A Battelle spokesman told HSR that Arizona State Univ. will collect exposure and control samples, perform epigenetic assays, identify exposure-specific biomarkers, develop algorithms and build a point-of-care device.