Infectious Diseases Research Directorate
The Infectious Diseases Directorate (IDD) consists of three research departments: Malaria, Enteric Diseases, and Viral and Rickettsial Diseases. Within these departments, over 100 scientists and technicians conduct research with an annual budget exceeding $10 million per year. Infectious diseases research at NMRC had its origins in the 1960s and 1970s with work on malaria and rickettsial diseases. Research programs on enteric diseases and viral diseases were started in the early 1980s and early 1990s, respectively. Diagnostic research on biological threat agents also had its origins in IDD in the early 1990s, but was later restructured as a separate directorate at NMRC.
IDD conducts research on infectious diseases that are considered to be significant threats to our deployed sailors, marines, soldiers, and airmen. Significant threats are those that have the potential to incapacitate a large number of deployed forces over a short time period, thus hindering the ability of warfighters to accomplish their mission. The geographical distribution of a disease; the lack of an effective vaccine, treatment, or other control measures; the mode of transmission; and the historical impact during past wars are all factors that determine the importance of an infectious disease to the U.S. Military. As reflected by the departmental organization within IDD, the main infectious disease targets on which research efforts are currently focused are malaria, bacterial causes of traveler's diarrhea, dengue fever, and scrub typhus. In general, the overarching research goal in IDD is to minimize the impact of these infectious diseases by preventing infection or clinical disease. In most cases, the best approach to achieve this goal is through the development of efficacious vaccines. Therefore, most of the biomedical research in IDD is focused on vaccine discovery and testing.
IDD departments have the unique research capability of developing a new vaccine from the conceptual stage through construction, "test tube" evaluation, animal model testing, human volunteer safety and immunogenicity trials to final large-scale human volunteer field trials to prove efficacy as required for FDA licensure of a vaccine. The field testing of vaccines is made easier by IDD's close association with the Navy's three overseas medical research laboratories located in Lima, Peru (Naval Medical Research Unit No. 6); Cairo, Egypt (Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3); and the Pacific region (Naval Medical Research Unit No. 2) since these laboratories are located in areas of the world where the target infectious diseases are highly endemic. Scientists in IDD also work closely with their Army colleagues from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, which is collocated with NMRC at the modern research facility in Silver Spring, Maryland. With the direct use of recombinant DNA techniques for vaccine delivery combined with genomic and proteomic approaches to discover new vaccine components, the Navy can expect to make rapid progress in the new millennium towards controlling many of the infectious diseases that currently remain as major threats to U.S. military forces deployed around the world.