Rocky Mountain Laboratories

Not to be confused with Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, an ecology laboratory in Colorado.

Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) is part of the NIH Intramural Research Program and is located in Hamilton, Montana. Operated by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, RML conducts research on maximum containment pathogens such as Ebola as well as research on prions and intracellular pathogens such as Coxiella burnetii and Francisella tularensis.^[2][3][4] RML operates one of the few Biosafety level 4 laboratories in the United States, as well as Biosafety level 3 and ABSL3/4 laboratories.^[5]

Rocky Mountain Laboratories

Agency overview
Formed	1928 (1928)[1]
Preceding agency	Hygienic Laboratory
Headquarters	Hamilton, Montana
Employees	400[1]
Parent agency	National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health, United States Department of Health & Human Services
Website

History

RML evolved as a result of research on Rocky Mountain spotted fever that began around 1900, in the Bitterroot Valley. A deadly disease of unknown origin plagued early settlers of the valley. It was known locally as "black measles" because of its severe, dark rash. Montana researchers were working in the area in makeshift cabins and tents.^[5]

RML formally began as the Montana Board of Entomology Laboratory. It was opened in 1928 by the Montana State Board of Entomology to study Rocky Mountain spotted fever and the ticks, Dermacentor andersoni, that carry it. Local opposition to the "tick lab" was strong, as residents worried ticks would escape the laboratory and cause an outbreak in the community. To allay their fears, the original laboratory building featured a small moat around its perimeter. In 1932, after spotted fever was diagnosed in other states, the federal government bought the facility and renamed it Rocky Mountain Laboratory. The laboratory expanded, adding faculty to study zoonotic diseases including typhus, tularemia, and Q-fever.^[6]

During World War II, the United States Public Health Service used the laboratory to manufacture Yellow fever vaccine. When the human serum–base vaccine caused an outbreak of Hepatitis B that infected more than 350,000 U.S. soldiers, two researchers at the laboratory, Dr. Mason Hargett and Harry Burruss, developed an aqueous-base vaccine that combined distilled water with virus grown in chicken eggs. By the end of the war, the laboratory distributed more than 1 million doses of the improved yellow fever vaccine.^[6]

In the post-war decades, the laboratory broadened its scope to study chlamydia trachomatis and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies including scrapie, mad cow disease, and chronic wasting disease. In 1982, Dr. Willy Burgdorfer discovered Borrelia burgdorferi, the tick-borne bacterium that causes Lyme disease.^[6]

Post 9/11 and Fauci

In the aftermath of September 11 attacks, Anthony Fauci convinced President George W. Bush to set up a bio-defense program and build a BSL-4 facility at RML, since the Bethesda campus of NIAID did not have the necessary real estate to build a facility. Fauci visited during the construction of the BSL4 lab in 2006.^[7] Fauci said the electronic age made it seem as if RML is just across the street from his Bethesda, Maryland NIAID campus.^[8]

Around 2009, Heinz Feldmann and Vincent Munster relocated to RML. In 2011, RML published its first transmissible vaccine paper for "disseminating" an Ebola vaccine to prevent Ebola transmission in wildlife populations.^[9] In 2018, RML won two DARPA projects for transmissible animal vaccines.^[10] Fauci's last visit to RML was in October 2019.^[11][12]

SARS-CoV-2 spillback

Since the 1980s, RML has used American mink (Neogale vison) for disease models.^[7] Mink are not found in China but are a SARS-CoV-2 transmission model.^[13][14]

Around 2011, RML started using Syrian Golden hamster's (Mesocricetus auratus) for disease transmission research.^[15] SARS-CoV-2 transmits efficiently in Syrian hamsters.^[16]

In 2017, RML started a deer mouse (Peromyscus) colony.^[17] The BSL-4 laboratory had used deer mice as a model for research on self-spreading vaccines.^[18][19] SARS-CoV-2 transmits efficiently in deer mice.^[20][21]

In 2018, Vincent Munster and Ralph S. Baric infected Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) with Bat SARS-like coronavirus WIV1.^[22] By 2020, the laboratory used Egyptian fruit bats as a model for DARPA PREEMPT self-spreading bat vaccines.^[23] SARS-CoV-2 transmits efficiently in Egyptian fruit bats.^[24]

SARS-CoV-2 publications

From 2018-20, Munster's lab was working on coronavirus cell entry.^[25] In 2020, Munster's lab had identified the cell entry of SARS-CoV-2.^[26] Kristian G. Andersen replied, "It’s unbelievably fast, almost too fast to imagine."^[27] In February 2020, electron microscope images of SARS-CoV-2 were collected at RML.^[28]