Countering effects of dirty bomb
focus of Berkeley grant

By Emmett Berg, Bay City News Service

September 26, 2006

BERKELEY (BCN) - A University of California at Berkeley team has received a grant of almost $1 million to help develop treatments designed to better counter the effects of a radiological, or dirty bomb, attack.

The $998,325 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was issued as part of the federal government's Project Bioshield, which seeks to prepare for or prevent widespread nuclear or radiological contamination.

The research team is developing agents for decontaminating people who may have been exposed to plutonium or similar radioactive substances, according to Kenneth Raymond, principal investigator of the program.

The chemical agents under development are designed to bind with poisonous metal ions that enter the human body upon radiological contamination. The dangerous ions could then leave the body through natural excretion.

The research could also one day help to clean up the treatment of radioactive waste in the environment.

Menlo Park-based SRI International will test the agents in development on animals. Within 18 months officials at NIAID hope to begin clinical trials.

The research team includes Raymond, Pat Durbin-Heavey and David Shuh, all members of the Chemical Sciences Division at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Others working on the program include Eleanor Blakely of the Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division and Polly Chang of SRI.

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