News Archive

BSL-3 Training Course - MARCE
May 6 - 8, 2008
University of Maryland School of Medicine

Please view the attached document for details on the MARCE Request for Proposals.

RCE Network Diagnostics Workshop
“Biology and Medicine Meet Engineering and Physics”
March 3-4, 2008
Los Angeles (near LAX)
Second Program Announcement

This one-week course will be held at the University of Maryland at Baltimore Monday, January 28 - Friday, Feb. 1. It is co-hosted by the National Biosafety and Biocontainment Training Program (NBBTP) and the Middle Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research (MARCE).

The MARCE will once again have the opportunity to apply for additional support for projects within the Center. These “New Opportunities” funds are not part of the MARCE’s original operational budget, but are intended for use by NIAID to fund new components and activities within the Regional Centers of Excellence. These funds will be applied to objectives such as: enhancing the capabilities of the Centers and the Biodefense Network, encouraging inter-Center activities, and providing additional research, product development, and training opportunities. It is important to remember that one of the goals for the MARCE is to develop vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics that are targeted to the Category A-C agents. Projects exhibiting real novelty and genuine innovation will be given extra consideration.

University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore MD

Beyond “Biosafety 101”: Operator’s Guide for a BSL-3

To match the increasing interest in BSL-3 research, a comprehensive training focusing on the operations of these laboratories is needed. The University of Maryland School of Medicine, Department of Environmental Health and Safety, and the Middle Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research (MARCE) designed an interactive course consisting of both lectures and hands-on activities covering issues related to laboratory safety operations for BSL-3 laboratories.

NIAID began a new bioinformatics venture in July 2004 intended to integrate the vast amount of genomic and other biological data both available and being produced by the rapid increase in biodefense research, the Bioinformatics Resource Centers.

Sanofi Pasteur has offered again this year to host a GMP Training Course on June 7-8th. They have selected a new speaker/course master this year, Dr. Laureen Little, and the tentative title will be, "Basic GMPs for an Early Stage Vaccine Product".

February 27, 2007
An all day MARCE conference at
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Introductory remarks by Myron Levine, M.D., D.T.P.H.
Discussion Facilitated by Prof. Michael Greenberger J.D.
Register now, space is limited.

As part of the Bioinformatics and Genomics Core Services, VBI is continuing to offer bioinformatics training courses to MARCE participants. We have recently updated the course material to include use cases of particular relevance to the researchers. To this end, we are using molecular data sets for MARCE organisms, starting with Francisella tularensis. As shown in the agenda below, topics include:

Key Algorithms in Lead Discovery
Searches
Sequence Alignment
Phylogeny
Protein Function Prediction
Advanced Searches
Genome Comparisons
Vaccine Candidate Targeting