Biological weapons achieve their intended effects by infecting people with disease-causing microorganisms and other replicative entities, including viruses, infectious nucleic acids and prions. The chief characteristic of biological agents is their ability to multiply in a host over time.
Viral pathogens pose a continuous and shifting biological threat to military readiness and national security overall in the form of infectious disease with pandemic potential. Today’s limited vaccines and other antivirals are often circumvented by quickly mutating viruses that evolve to develop resistance to treatments that are carefully formulated to act only specific strains of a virus. DARPA’s INTERfering and Co-Evolving Prevention and Therapy (INTERCEPT) program aims to harness viral evolution to create a novel, adaptive form of medical countermeasure—therapeutic interfering particles (TIPs)—that outcompetes viruses in the body to prevent or treat infection.
DARPA BTO’s Rapid Threat Assessment program, aims to develop methods and technologies that can map the complete molecular mechanism of a threat agent within 30 days of its exposure to a human cell. DARPA is now developing new approaches to fight Biological attacks.
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