U.S. Company Is Working to Convert
Soviet Bioweapons Plant to Peaceful Use
By MARILYN CHASE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
interactive.wsj.com
November 20, 2001
When Eric Mathur of Diversa Corp. visited his new Russian business partners last January, he found a dilapidated plant in a city that wasn't on any maps, and workers whose specialty was illegal under international treaties.
He was delighted.
Diversa's new partner was the State Center for Applied Microbiology, in the once-secret city of Obolensk, where Soviet researchers developed weapons grade anthrax for plants nearby to produce by the ton. After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the Obolensk facility and other bioweapons plants shut down, becoming largely mothballed, rusty and overgrown with weeds.
Now the former weapons scientists of Obolensk are teaming up with Diversa, a genomics company in San Diego, in a swords to plowshares program. The aim is to convert the former weapons plant into a factory for peaceful technologies and to keep the former weapons scientists gainfully and productively employed. Some people believe that such programs are the best hope for countering the transfer of germ warfare seed stocks and expertise from the old Soviet Union to terrorist groups and rogue states.
But this isn't charity. Diversa hopes to profit from selling products that its Russian partners develop under the partnership, such as microbe detection devices, antifungal enzymes and antibiotics. Under the arrangement, Diversa would pay royalties to the Russians for these sales.
Mr. Mathur, whose title is senior director of molecular biodiversity, says Diversa also plans to explore the rich and varied Russian ecological system in hopes of discovering genetic material that could lead to new medical or industrial products. Frequently, new, breakthrough drugs come from microscopic bugs found in exotic dirt or waters.
The U.S. Energy Department played matchmaker to Diversa and the Russians through a program started soon after the Soviet Union collapsed, called the Initiative for Proliferation Prevention. It provides seed capital, matched by corporate funds, to former Soviet weaponeers with the goal of creating saleable products in commercial ventures. Since 1994, the program has awarded $129 million in seed money, matched by corporate grants, to 88 former Soviet weapons institutes in current-day Russia, Ukraine and Kazakstan. It has engaged more than 10,000 of the former USSR's estimated 60,000 weapons program employees in projects with an average duration of three years.
A parallel push is being made by the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC), a multinational consortium sponsored by the U.S., the European Union, Japan and Russia. In its 2000 report, ISTC said it awarded grants of about $62 million for 237 swords to plowshares science projects and $24 million for partnerships, with direct grant payments of almost $27 million to 21,275 scientists. One of its ventures in Belarus reassigned former weaponeers to study the cells of childhood leukemia patients, and former designers of computerized missile guidance systems to create computer based analytical models of leukemia prognosis.
Thousands of Soviet scientists -- many with M.D.s or Ph.D.s in microbiology -- lost their jobs after the breakup of the USSR. Many now sell vodka, drive taxis or scratch out a subsistence by growing their own vegetables. Poverty and plunging status make them vulnerable to being courted by countries seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction, and at least some are suspected to have sold their knowledge abroad. But now, "many but not all are being paid on a much more stable basis thanks to these U.S. grants," says Amy E. Smithson, a senior associate of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, a think tank.
Diversa, with a portfolio of products and services in fields of genetics and biodiversity, has matched a $1 million energy department grant by pledging $2.5 million worth of cash and in kind contributions over two years to help turn around three Russian weapons institutes. Once dedicated to making a grisly array of germs and toxins, the institutes are now devoted to detecting, diagnosing and treating the very ills they once sought to induce.
In the city of Golitsino, Diversa is converting a factory once dedicated to making fungal toxins, which contaminate crops and induce illnesses, to a plant that produces enzymes that neutralize those toxins. In the town of Serpukhov, the company has a third project with the Research Center of Toxicology, Hygiene Regulation of Biopreparations. The center was dedicated to testing germ formulas in rats and conducting airflow tests of germ weapons. Now, it has redirected workers to do research on a new class of antimicrobial drugs.
Clashing of corporate cultures is a perennial issue in joint ventures. Even so, early relations between the American biotech scientists and the Russian weaponeers were unusually dissonant.
"Our main contact at Obolensk was Vladimir Volkov," Mr. Mathur recalls. "When I first met this man, he said he worked with human pathogenic bacteria. He scared me to death. Now I've gotten to trust him and I believe his heart is in the right place. He now wants to develop products to benefit humanity."
Instead of making weapons from Bacillus anthracis, Mr. Volkov's team is using a benign bug called Bacillus subtilis to make biotechnology products. In addition, the team hopes to produce rapid detection systems for anthrax contamination.
The Russian scientists are sensitive about their past research and prefer to focus on their current endeavors. One of the researchers working with Diversa is Alexander Boronin, Director of the Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms and one of Russia's most senior academic scientists. Although Dr. Boronin was never involved in weapons development, his field -- the genetic basis of antibiotic resistance in bacteria -- has been a magnet for both medical and defense interest over the years. Now he is drawn to the hunt for new products from nature, as well as the new field of "green chemistry" -- using natural products to clean up oil spills and pollution. A fourth Diversa project is the funding of a Russian ecology and bioresources center.
"We're making a good blend with the people from Diversa," Dr. Boronin says. "It looks promising. ... We have a good future."
And early dissonance has resolved into a new kind of harmony. In Serpukhov, for example, Mr. Mathur found that Roman Borovick, director of the center there, shares his Latvian heritage. Soon they were exchanging Latvian gifts as well as scientific expertise.
Diversa Chief Executive Jay Short sees his company's support of 52 Russian scientists as a win-win collaboration, both commercially and politically. "There are brilliant scientists in Russia. The problem is infrastructure. If we can help by building capacity, and help them bring relevant products to the marketplace, that's a seed for tremendous growth."
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Dr. Short believes his current efforts are only a beginning. "Fifty two scientists out of 60,000, is a small cut," he says. "More is better."
Write to Marilyn Chase at marilyn.chase@wsj.com |
