Ebola. SARS. BSE. They may be household names but referring to these pathogens is enough to strike fear in the hearts of anyone within earshot.

Unless, of course, it happens to be a researcher from the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health (CSCHAH), a state-of-the-art laboratory complex in Winnipeg operated jointly by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). It houses the CFIA’s National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease as well as the PHAC’s National Microbiology Laboratory.Here, the diseases create excitement.

Dr. Frank Plummer, Chief Scientific Advisor, PHAC and Scientific Director General, National Microbiology Laboratory, and his counterpart, Dr. Paul Kitching, Director, National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, say their teams are kept busy by these diseases and other things you read in the newspapers, such as bioterrorism.

“Whether it’s getting ready for a pandemic of influenza, dealing with existing problems withWest Nile or problems with E.coli and Salmonella, anti-microbial resistance in hospitals—things like C.difficile and the superbugs—all those things are day-to-day business,” says Plummer. “What keeps us the busiest at any given time varies based on what’s going on. In addition to the research we’re doing, we have a key role in responding to these problems.”

According to Kitching, when the CSCHAH was built, it was underutilized for the first couple of years. The first labs started operationg in 1998 surrounded by criticism. Then came a flurry of worldwide incidents that left everybody scared.

“Come 9/11, SARS, BSE, avian influenza, if Canada hadn’t had a facility like this, it would really have been severely compromised,” he says, adding the country would have been much more dependent on help from abroad, making it vulnerable.

Kitching’s seen it before.He came from the United Kingdom where he was in charge of diagnostics during the outbreak of Foot andMouth Disease in 2001,when the virus spread from the UK to France,Holland and Ireland, countries who had traditionally depended on the UK for support. Suddenly they found they weren’t receiving the support they needed because the UK was busy looking after itself. “If Canada was dependent on the United States for all its support and something happened which affected the U.S. and Canada, well, you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out what their preference would be,” he says.

Plummer agrees it’s fortuitous the lab opened when it did. “If they hadn’t made that decision to build the lab, I don’t think we’d be in a very good place right now.”

Kitching says bringing the human and animal aspects of research together under one roof not only makes sense, it’s essential to the world in which we now live.

“If you look historically at where emerging diseases have come for humans, they’ve come from animals,” he says adding approximately 70 per cent of them in the last 20 years have come from wildlife reservoirs. “Pathogens don’t distinguish necessarily between human and animals. For us, the distinction between us and pigs is quite major but as far as a pathogen is concerned, the difference isn’t that obvious.”

In addition, climate change and increased air travel have literally changed the way viruses grow and travel.

	CSCHAH Facts
	•	Sixty-one per cent of laboratory space is devoted to Containment Level 2, while 35% is dedicated to Containment Level 3 laboratories. The CL 4 laboratories represent less than 4% of the laboratory area.
	•	Approximately 500 Government of Canada employees work at the complex
	•	CL 3 and 4 laboratory areas contain airtight rooms and ductwork, and feature interlocking and airtight bio-seal doors and damper systems. Air-locks for entry and exit maintain negative air pressures to direct air inward, ensuring organisms being studied remain in the laboratory.
	•	Air exiting the laboratories is filtered using High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filtration. HEPA filters can filter out particles 85 times smaller than the smallest known disease-causing agent.
	•	Solid and liquid waste sterilization is accomplished in part through a 20,000 litre liquid sterilization system and a specially-designed autoclave to heat and break down solid waste.
	•	Three 1000-kilowatt generators handle emergency power back-up to all heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, and to essential life safety systems.

Working together and being housed in the same facility was unheard of until Canada opened the CSCHAH.The facility is a coup for Canada. It houses Canada’s only Containment Level 4 laboratories, providing the capability to work safely with the most serious human and animal diseases. It is also the first facility in the world to combine labs for human and animal disease research at the highest level of biocontaiment, providing a unique environment in which researchers can collaborate as they study established, emerging and re-emerging diseases.

Yet it came to be for less lofty reasons than working together on things of common interest, leveraging one another’s work and eliminating bureaucracy. It was for practical reasons such as saving money, Kitching says, but “The reality is, it turned out to be an extremely good idea and now everyone else in the world is looking at this model and saying, ‘Well, what an obvious thing to do.Why haven’t we done it?’”

The lab’s Winnipeg location is ideal, says Kitching, because it’s in the middle of the country, on a site suited for major construction. “We don’t have problems with major weather issues,we don’t have seismic activities, we don’t have anything which would likely affect the integrity of the building,” he adds, all of which are important considerations for a high-containment facility.

International acclaim
Aside from garnering fame due to the very nature of its setup, the centre has made some big discoveries and worked on high-profile research projects.

“I think the biggest breakthrough is that we have developed very, very promising candidate vaccines for Ebola and Marburg and Lassa Fever viruses that I believe are the best candidates out there,” says Plummer. “It puts Canada in a leadership position in this field. It highlights the capabilities of Canadian science and shows that we are at the cutting edge.”

Kitching agrees. “The lab is on the internationalmapmore and more, appearing in international literature, referring not only to the research work we do, but also the management of the place where we’ve got human and animal researchers working together.”

Levels of Containment The laboratories in the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health (CSCHAH) are classified by the safety requirements needed for the organisms to be manipulated as well as the type of work to be done in the lab. They range from Containment Level 2 (the lowest and requiring the least safety requirements) to Containment Level 4 (the highest and requiring the most safety restrictions). ....Level 2: The majority of space in the facility is dedicated to Level 2 labs, which are designed for work involving pathogens that can cause human or animal disease but, under normal circumstances, are unlikely to be a serious hazard to laboratory workers, the community, livestock or the environment. Laboratory exposures rarely cause infection leading to serious disease and risk of spread is limited. Effective treatment and preventive measures are available. ....Level 3: This designation is applicable to facilities where work is done with agents which can cause serious human or animal disease or can result in serious economic consequences. These are diseases that do not ordinarily spread by casual contact from one individual to another, or that can be treated by antimicrobial agents. When entering a Level 3 area, staff must change into laboratory clothing and leave their personal clothing outside the area. As an extra precaution, they must shower out of most areas. ....Level 4: This area is designed for work with dangerous and exotic agents that usually produce very serious and often untreatable diseases. These pathogens may be readily transmitted from one individual to another or from animal to human. In addition to following the same entry and exit protocols as Level 3 workers, staff trained to work here must wear positive air pressure protective suits connected to filtered air lines. The suits are chemically treated after each session.

Challenges
This brings more opportunities for funding, a serious roadblock for many researchers. Most of the CSCHAH’s funding comes from the federal government, with some grants from both the Canadian and U.S. governments thrown in.

The specialized nature of the CSCHAH’s research also brings funding opportunities.With so much to be done on the diseases and so few facilities capable of doing the work, there’s a lot of opportunity for scientists to quickly become established in a particular area of expertise and to work closely with labs abroad.This makes for little competition. “It’s a very nice atmosphere to be working in where you’re not looking over your shoulder all the time,” says Kitching. “We can actually co-ordinate our work... and pool our results.” In other words, Canada can put in $200,000 and yet it can benefit from $1 million being invested by other labs around the world.

In the beginning, the most obvious challenge the researchers at CSCHAH faced was winning over the people of Winnipeg, many of whom were fearful of what they saw as a dangerous neighbour in their midst. A Community Liaison Committee (CLC) was the key to success. Committee members represent a wide range of community groups including residents, healthcare professionals, agricultural representatives, business leaders and community educators. All three levels of government are also represented. The CLC monitors safety issues and actively seeks and provides information to the community as it deems necessary. It regularly receives briefings on the CSCHAH and is free to question staff on any aspect of their activities.

Most people are concerned about something escaping from the lab. “‘Do I hold my breath when I drive past the laboratory,’ things like that,” says Kitching. “We reassure them.

“Everything that goes on in this lab is made public and we now have the trust of the local community,” he says. “Any accidents which happen—somebody sticks themselves with a needle or drops a flask or something like that—they’re automatically informed, no matter what level of containment the accident occured in.We have regular meetings with them. It’s more transparent here than it would be in your local hospital, for instance.”

A recent public information session held by the CLC brought out approximately 65 people over two sessions. “People were saying how proud they were to have [the CSCHAH] in their environment,” says Kitching.

The CSCHAH invests a lot of money in cutting-edge equipment and Plummer worries about keeping up with it all. “We’ve built up a world-class institution with capabilities that are as good as or better than anywhere else in the world,” he says. “Keeping that at the cutting edge is an ongoing challenge.”

Plummer says the lab has “one of the few new-generation DNA sequencing technologies, called pyrosequencing. I think we’re one of only two in the country.”

Kitching’s focus revolves around safety. “Virtually everybody on the staff is cleared to Secret security level; you’ve got to be able not only to trust your staff, you’ve got to have good staff,” he says. “You can have all the regulations and all the rules in place but if the staff doesn’t follow them, then you’ve got a risk.” CSCHAH staff recognize the importance of the rules and regulations, as well as the building construction, engineering controls and safety equipment, but they know it is all secondary to training, technique, skill and experience.

Lab-in-a-Suitcase Unique Mobile Laboratory Ready to Deploy The National Microbiology Lab (NML) and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) have a mobile laboratory capacity that is prepared to deploy on very short notice to assist around the world in public health crises. At the request of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Outbreak and Response Network (GOARN), teams of two to four PHAC scientists are deployed with the mobile lab. The PHAC teams work closely with the WHO, as well as the government of the affected country and other partners responding to the situation. The mobile lab can also be used within Canada when laboratory support is needed in remote areas or under special circumstances. PHAC has two complete mobile labs available for deployment at all times, and all of the items required for the lab are designed to be easily and safely transported. The situation at hand will dictate the types of equipment the team brings with them to the site, particularly the type of diagnostic tests that will be required and the services and infrastructure that will be available locally. Each mobile lab includes an isolator, a microscope, various test kits, a real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT PCR) unit for rapid virus detection, a generator, a laptop computer, and a satellite phone. PHAC’s scientists have extensive field experience working in the most remote areas of the world. The team is well versed in the appropriate safety measures for handling potentially infected materials and are able to work safely in the most high-risk situations. Each member receives all appropriate immunizations and their health is monitored according to a prearranged plan following the mission. In the past, the mobile lab has been called on to respond to outbreaks such as SARS in China and Hong Kong, Marburg virus in Angola, Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nipah in Bangladesh.

To this end, he appreciates that the centre has a clear funding source for facility maintenance. “There can’t be a conflict between ‘Can I do my day-to-day job or should I invest in maintaining the integrity of the facility?’Without that clear priority to make sure everything is safe, you can run into trouble... There’s no compromise made in terms of ‘Can we get away with this? Is this safe?’ If it’s not safe, we don’t do it and that’s all there is to it.”

With the 10th anniversary of the official opening approaching in June 2009, Kitching says the CSCHAH staff feel a modest pride. “We’re not going to have processions down the street or anything like that,” he says. “It’s business as usual.We see evidence of our success in the scientific publications and the scientific press that we’ve established ourselves as one of the leading labs in the world.

“This site is the best laboratory of its times in the world and the potential opportunities for this lab are just huge. I think this whole facility was just an amazing act of foresight to have built it and created what we have here and Canadians should be very proud of it.”