Worms may yield salmonella vaccine BY PATRICK PETERSON FLORIDA TODAY July 12, 2008 CAPE CANAVERAL -- As the salmonella scare worsens and Florida's tomato industry suffers, SPACEHAB Inc. and its partners are preparing to ask the Food and Drug Administration's permission to conduct human tests of a salmonella vaccine developed partly in space. On the past two shuttle missions, several strains of salmonella were used to attack microscopic worms. The bacteria becomes more virulent in space, and the experiment helped researchers shorten the process of deciding which salmonella strain was right to make the vaccine. "We have the germ we'd like to use," said principal investigator Dr. Tim Hammond, a researcher with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in North Carolina, which has partnered in many vaccine development projects. "We learned which strain would be the best to make the vaccine with." This could be the first vaccine produced with help from a laboratory in space, which shortened the development time. "We didn't know what the (vaccine) candidate was until we went into space," Hammond said. The partnership hopes to market a salmonella vaccine in two to three years. Salmonella was chosen as a test subject long before the latest outbreak, which has been associated with illnesses caused by eating tomatoes, cilantro and peppers. However, the outbreak, which has cost Florida farmers millions, has increased interest in a vaccine. "The timing is serendipity," Hammond said. Spread by animals that are immune to its effects, salmonella is the most common form of food poisoning in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports more than 40,000 cases annually. Worldwide, the germ is one of the top three causes of infant mortality. While a salmonella vaccine could be beneficial for the world and profitable for SPACEHAB, it is simply a test case to prove the technique of making vaccines quickly in space. "Our focus is to develop an ongoing vaccine development model," said Jim Royston, president of SPACEHAB, headquartered in Webster, Texas. "Salmonella happens to be the first in the pipeline. "The reason we choose salmonella really wasn't about the market value of the vaccine itself," Royston added. "It was to be quickest to market with it and then get the others in the pipeline." SPACEHAB, which provides cargo modules and spacecraft processing, has created a biotech subsidiary called BioSpace Technologies Inc. The company has partnered with the VA, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, Duke University Medical Center, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Germany's Max Planck Institute. The company has an agreement to fly experiments on most of the remaining shuttle flights and will retain all commercial rights to products developed under this agreement. "As we fly each new (vaccine) candidate we will have potential new candidates in the pipeline that we will fly along with it," Royston said. Experiments could also be flown on unmanned cargo flights to the International Space Station. During Discovery's flight in May, a compact apparatus carried 128 test tubes with 50,000 tiny worms per tube. During the flight, an astronaut turned a crank that moved eight plungers and mixed the worms and the germs. Later, a second cranking added a fixative. The company has invested millions in the effort, to which Space Florida has contributed $90,000 and allowed the company to use laboratory space at Kennedy Space Center. The state agency hopes its investment will create biotechnology jobs in Florida. SPACEHAB will launch other experiments on another shuttle mission slated to launch in November. By that time, human clinical tests of the salmonella vaccine should be under way, and the potential for creating new vaccines in space might be clearer. The company is identifying the next more important and more profitable vaccine it will try to create. "We're trying to make sure we have a home run on the first one," Hammond said. Contact Peterson at 639-3644 or ppeterson@floridatoday.com.