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Buffalo News

ZeptoMetrix joins fight against flu epidemic - for $5 million to make 150 strains of virus for the CDC

By Fred O. Williams
Updated: 03/22/07 7:48 AM

Businessman and aspiring county executive Christopher Collins stood before Buffalo’s TV cameras on Tuesday and added another line to his resume: Disease fighter.

ZeptoMetrix Corp., his biotechnology company co-owned with scientist James Hengst, has been picked for a high-profile, high-risk job in the defense against a deadly flu epidemic.

Under a U.S. contract worth about $5 million, its lab on Buffalo’s Main Street will mass-produce viruses from more than 150 flu strains, including the avian influenza or “bird flu,” Collins and Hengst announced Wednesday.

Virus production is necessary for the development of diagnostic tests. Testing should help isolate and treat carriers and slow the outbreak, if the virus mutates into a form that jumps from person to person.

“The worst thing you could have is someone with [bird flu] admitted to a hospital, where peoples’ immune systems are already compromised,” Collins said during the morning announcement at the company.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, slowing an outbreak will buy time for scientists to come up with vaccines and therapies. The CDC, coordinator of the anti-pandemic effort, is the source of the four-year contract.

ZeptoMetrix’s role in the widely watched defense against a global pandemic raises the region’s biotech profile, development officials said.

“It’s a great example of the type of innovation that goes on here,” said Dave Tyler, business development manager for life sciences at Buffalo Niagara Enterprise. ZeptoMetrix gets its cell growth culture locally, from Invitrogen on Grand Island, showing that the region’s biotech cluster is starting to have weight, he said.

Rising along with ZeptoMetrix’s visibility is the political profile of Collins, its chairman.

The Clarence businessman wants to be the next Erie County executive, if he gets the backing of the Republican party. He ran for a seat in Congress against incumbent John LaFalce in 1998, winning 38 percent of the vote after spending $500,000 of his own money.

ZeptoMetrix is one of eight business ventures he has invested in, mostly in Western New York, which make things from dinner plates to hospital oxygen generators. They have combined sales of $60 million to $80 million and about 600 jobs, he said.

On the other hand, working with deadly disease agents has its risks, too. And the fears surrounding bird flu, classified as a potential bioterrorism agent, are especially high. About half the people in Asia and Africa who have caught bird flu from animals have died from the infection, according to the CDC.

Normally, the CDC itself would provide virus samples, said Dan Jernigan, deputy director of the CDC influenza division. The scope of the preparation against bird flu required contracting out virus production. Federal inspectors will continue to visit the Buffalo lab to examine safety measures for lab workers and the community, he said.

Workers at ZeptoMetrix will have to “shower out” each time they leave the airtight lab where flu strains are handled. They even have to sign a statement promising not to visit any poultry farms within five days of work, for fear of infecting the birds. If the bird flu threat passes, lab workers will continue to have to shower out long after the strains are gone.

Collins said the company’s ability to manage the risk is what won the contract. Zepto- Metrix has long been handling other dangerous viruses like HIV and SARS. Collins himself can’t enter the lab because access is strictly controlled, he said. “I can assure the public this is a very secure facility.”

If a deadly flu strain began jumping from human to human, ZeptoMetrix would be part of an anti-pandemic response mechanism. Samples from victims would be shipped to Buffalo, where the lab would grow copies of the virus in animal cells and render them incapable of replicating. Then the defused copies would be shipped to test makers in Massachusetts, Maryland and California. They would devise tests that distinguish the lethal flu from common strains.

With an accurate test in hand, health officials could isolate infected individuals or regions, slowing the outbreak, according to the CDC Influenza Pandemic Operational Plan.

ZeptoMetrix is adding eight lab technicians and other workers to its staff of 30 to handle the CDC contract, officials said.

The company’s building, which once housed a car dealer’s offices, will be joined by a new headquarters next door at 878 Main St., a dilapidated mansion that ZeptoMetrix is renovating, Collins said. The company has been named developer of the historic districtprotected structure, with plans to spend about $500,000 to restore it, he said.

In addition, an offshoot company called Buckler Biodefense Corp. is developing antibody production methods that could provide a rapid therapy for new, lethal flu strains, Collins said. With a partner biotech company in New Zealand, Buckler can expose goats to viruses to produce antibodies.

“We are positive we could create an emergency therapeutic for bird flu,” Collins said. “And I may have some at my home,” he added with a laugh.

But seriously, “if we do make some, we’ll have a few doses here.