NBAF is open. When will scientists start animal health research?

MANHATTAN — After well over a decade of politics, applications, funding debates and construction, the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility is officially open.

But the federal government's newest biosecurity laboratories in Manhattan are still likely more than a year away from performing the animal health research they were designed for.

Dignitaries celebrated NBAF's opening in the animal health corridor with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Wednesday.

Officials provided area media with a tour of the labs last week, highlighting safety precautions, but photos and detailed notes were strictly prohibited in the interest of security.

The lab's mission is to protect American agriculture, farmers and citizens against animal diseases that threaten the food supply, agricultural economy and public health.

That means working with newer diseases and ones that can spread from livestock to humans. Experts study to prevent, surveil, diagnose and respond to diseases, including managing vaccine banks and developing new vaccines and antivirals.

While work is happening at NBAF, they are not yet performing research in the labs.

Staff are doing various compliance and regulatory work, inspections, developing and testing protocols and standard operating procedures, preparing equipment and training before working with any pathogens.

"They will check all the systems according to the international standards and national standards," Alfonso Clavijo, the NBAF director, said of the inspections. "And only after we have that approval will we be able to actually do any work. We expect that by late 2024, we should be able to have that approval."

Officials characterized NBAF scientists as being at the crawling stage before learning to walk, jog and run. Once they design the procedures, they will be tested on clean animals before animals with less risky pathogens, then animals with riskier zoonotic diseases and finally the most risky zoonotic diseases the BSL-4 lab is designed to handle.

"Safety and security is the primary goal," said Ken Burton, the NBAF deputy director. "And we don't do anything to move into science until we feel that everything is safe and secure to be able to do that."

The pathogens have not yet been moved from Plum Island to NBAF.

"What I can share is that very experienced federal partners are going to be handling the transfer of the scientific materials," said Katie Pawlosky, the NBAF communications director. "No animals, no equipment, will transfer.

"As far as timeline, I don't know that we have that information yet. We're still working through our science preparatory phase. We won't be able to begin any of that until we're ready, but it will be a phased process done very safely and securely. But for the safety and security of the process, we can't really disclose details."

NBAF is the first high-containment, biosafety level 4 facility for livestock in the United States. BSL-4 laboratories work with the highest risk microbes and have the greatest containment requirements.

"The microbes in a BSL-4 lab are dangerous and exotic, posing a high risk of aerosol-transmitted infections," the CDC reports. "Infections caused by these microbes are frequently fatal and without treatment or vaccines."

Required lab practices include changing clothes before entering, chemical showers before taking off the suit, showering upon exiting and decontaminating all materials. Some NBAF scientists may shower upward of 19 times a day, with shower doors remaining locked until sensors measure at least five minutes of water flow has been used.

Work in BSL-4 labs must be performed in a high-level biological safety cabinet or by wearing a full body positive pressure suit.

At NBAF, blue hoses hang from the ceiling that can be hooked up to the white suits to provide researchers with clean air to breathe. The labs are designed to reduce the number of sharp objects, minimizing the risk of puncturing a suit, although the positive air flow should mean clean air would flow out of a hole instead of dirty air flowing in.

BSL-4 labs must have a dedicated supply and exhaust of air, among other facility construction requirements.

At NBAF, there are 976 high efficiency particulate air filter caissons that can be sealed off from a service area above the labs. It requires a seven-person team an entire year to service all the HEPA filters.

As can be seen in the NBAF logo, its research will primarily center on cattle, swine and sheep.

But researchers won't be buying any old cow off the feedlot or pigs from a hog farm.

The livestock that will serve as test subjects for training and experiments at NBAF will instead be sourced from USDA-inspected vendors who breed livestock for research purposes and comply with regulatory standards. Similarly, the feed doesn't come from a local feed store, as scientists need a chain of custody and quality control for what the animals eat.

While the animals are living in a lab with no sunlight for weeks or months, scientists try to make them more comfortable and their lives more normal — like stuff for pigs to root around in — in part so research is valid.

Research and training includes infecting animals with such diseases as foot-and-mouth disease, African swine fever and Japanese encephalitis. When animals become too sick to stand, the lab has systems to hoist them onto carts.

Scientists will humanely euthanize animals, then cut them open in a necropsy room to examine how diseases affected their bodies.

Such training is necessary so veterinarians know how to recognize the diseases and prevent outbreaks in other countries — such as the ongoing African swine fever outbreak in the Dominican Republic — from spreading to the U.S.

When scientists are finished with animal carcasses or portions of them, up to 3,000 pounds of waste is lowered from the necropsy into one of two thermal tissue autoclaves.

There, the flesh is pressure cooked while solids are ground up. After 10 hours or so, liquids are boiled off, leaving behind about half the weight in solids.

Tour guides described the product as a brown-black thick slurry, about the consistency and color of brownie batter.

That waste is then incinerated, and the ash is left to a contractor.

With redundancy in mind — and because only one supplier builds them — NBAF has two incinerators.

Liquid waste goes to one of 11 decontamination tanks in the basement, with separate 9,000 gallon tanks for each lab, so the waste doesn't mix and cross-contaminate.

The tanks are essentially steam pressure cookers, serving as the world's largest waste water thermal decontamination system, rendering the liquid lab waste nonhazardous and noninfectious. The liquid then goes through a wastewater pre-treatment plant and into a manmade wetland.

There is space for a potential 12th tank, but wheeling it in would require removing any fixtures from ceilings and walls and pivoting with one inch of clearance on either side.

NBAF already has 280 people working in Manhattan. Of the current employees, about 70% live within 30 minutes of the lab.

Once fully staffed, it will be more than 400 people. About a quarter of the staff will be dedicated to facilities and maintenance.

NBAF replaces an aged facility on Plum Island, at the northeast tip of Long Island east of New York City.

"We're starting to transition from Plum Island to NBAF," said Clavijo, NBAF director. "We have already scientists that have moved from that location."

Despite the addition of water features, which officials said were designed with memory of the island in mind, at least some staff won't be making the move to the Little Apple.

Robin Holland, the NBAF science transition manager, said that is the case for the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory.

"Because FADDL is moving from Plum Island to here at NBAF, there was a gap that was identified that we would likely have gaps in our scientific expertise that would be coming, because a lot of our staff will not be making that relocation from Plum Island to NBAF," Holland said.

Workforce development initiatives have been established, including one that Holland said is "focused on building that capacity of trained scientists to help fill that void that may be created when our scientific experts, with some of them not making that relocation process."

Another program established at K-State is focused on creating a pipeline of technicians for the diagnostic lab.

Some of the BSL-3 lab space has windows, which officials said will help the mental health of scientists and help attract qualified staff who would prefer to not work in a lab without sunlight and a view of the outdoors.

The windows were designed with various protections, like a metal grill, in order to withstand the strongest of tornadoes — which became a heightened concern after a tornado tore through Manhattan and the K-State campus in 2008.

Elsewhere at NBAF, the concrete and steel shell of the containment zone is similarly built to a nuclear power plant's tornado standards.

NBAF's construction came in under its $1.25 billion budget. Kansas contributed $307 million, and a small portion of that will be returned.

That's even after spending about $80 million in technology upgrades before the lab was completed. Tim Barr, the NBAF program manager, said switching from mechanical freezers to liquid nitrogen ones are one such example.

"The technology for liquid nitrogen freezers had improved vastly since the design was completed in 2012 vs. mechanical freezers," he said. "So a mechanical freezer, just like your refrigerator at home, except ours are much colder and we're storing very, very valuable samples in there. So when that breaks, if that goes down, you have hours to do something about that freezer. With a liquid nitrogen freezer, you have days because of the way they work."

While officials didn't have a dollar estimate for annual operational costs, Clavijo said 10% to 15% of construction costs is the international standard for operating a high containment lab.