The Anti-Plague System and the Soviet Biological Warfare Program

Abstract

The USSR possessed a unique national public health system that included an agency named "anti-plague system." Its mission was to protect the country from highly dangerous diseases of either natural or laboratory etiology. During the 1960s, the anti-plague system became the lead agency of a program to defend against biological warfare, codenamed Project 5. This responsibility grew and by the middle 1970s came to include undertaking tasks for the offensive biological warfare program, codenamed Ferment. This article describes the anti-plague system's activities relevant to both aspects of the Soviet Union's biological warfare program, offense and defense, and analyzes its contributions to each.

D27-pLpxL, an Avirulent Strain of Yersinia pestis , Primes T Cells That Protect against Pneumonic Plague

“…It is generally acknowledged that the most effective vaccines against intracellular bacteria are live attenuated mutants (12,42). Live attenuated plague vaccines have been used effectively in humans, and the live Pgm-negative EV76 plague vaccine is licensed for use in several former states of the Soviet Union (9,14,50). However, passage of EV76 has resulted in a number of genetically distinct substrains (49).…”

“…A Pgm-deficient vaccine strain, denoted EV76, was developed for human use nearly a century ago (14). It was administered to tens of millions of humans (14) and is still in use today in Russia (9,50). However, live plague vaccines have never been licensed in the United States or the United Kingdom, in part because Pgm-deficient strains are only conditionally attenuated in mice, which tolerate high doses administered subcutaneously but succumb to disease at relatively low doses administered intravenously or intranasally (28,29,32,44,45).…”

ThesmpB-ssrAMutant ofYersinia pestisFunctions as a Live Attenuated Vaccine To Protect Mice against Pulmonary Plague Infection

“…In addition, immunization with heat-or formalin-killed bacteria has generally failed to protect experimental animals against pneumonic plague (46). On the other hand, live attenuated plague vaccines, such as one based on the Y. pestis EV76 strain, appeared to be protective against pneumonic plague (46,49,53). Such genetically undefined strains can be unstable and retain significant virulence.…”

Vaccination with Live Yersinia pestis Primes CD4 and CD8 T Cells That Synergistically Protect against Lethal Pulmonary Y. pestis Infection

“…Pneumonic plague is nearly always fatal unless antibiotic treatment is initiated soon after infection (19). While natural outbreaks of pneumonic plague are uncommon, they have been reported (31), and Cold War scientists developed means to purposefully aerosolize Y. pestis (3,44). Effectively aerosolized, antibiotic-resistant Y. pestis would constitute a formidable biological weapon.…”