Professor Tamas Bartfai is the Director of the Harold L. Dorris Neurological Research Center at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California and professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm. He was formerly Chairman of the Department of Neurochemistry and Neurotoxicology at Stockholm University in Sweden and Head of Central Nervous System Research, at Hoffmann-La Roche in Switzerland.
He is member of Academia Europa, an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and has won many awards and prizes throughout his career including, the Ellison Senior Neuroscientist Award (2000) and the Eriksson Prize of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1992, shared with Håkan Persson). He has acted as a consultant to Governments, industry and international and non-international organizations.

Statement by Mr Tamas Bartfai

The central and peripheral nervous system represent a key target for the rapid and deadly action of large number of toxins that biological evolution has brought forth. Similarly, the nervous system has been the target of the earliest chemical weapons andall generations of nerve gases target acetylcholineesterase, an important protein in neuronal signaling to both muscle and nerve.

Examination of the case of acetylcholineesterase inhibitors from the point of view of threatof weapon development (as it took place in the past 50 years when the successive generations of nerve gases were developed and produced in large scale) and medical opportunity (as it took place in the past 15 years) is also instructive in the context of weapons and medicines targeted at the nervous system.

The presently approved drugs for treatment of the devastating neurodegenerative disease Alzheimer disease are all inhibitors of acetylcholineesterase. Would there be a general prohibition on working on this protein and on inhibitors of this proteinthen patients and society would be without the benefits of the partial relief these drugs (Arisept, Excelon, Galantamine) bring to Alzheimers disease patients (40 mio) and their relatives.

The new developments in biology: the data from the human genome project; HGP, polymorphism studies and the potential of genotyping of people with respect to e.g. sensitivity to organophosphates - and other acetylcholine esterase inhibitors or other agents that affect the nervous system will be covered briefly, with respect to their potential of selecting soldiers to reduce bodily harm due to genetic vulnerability or aiming at populations in ethnic conflict – as the most dangerous potential use of emerging human genetic data.

Using psycho tropic agents directed at the central nervous system may also be aimed at incapacitating rather than killing the opponent: creating confusion, anxiety and earesing memory: are all actions of such agents that have been examined and even employed in smaller scale – as “dirty tricks”.

Neurotropic viruses as potential biological weapons and viral vector based genetherapy will be discussed with respect to medical potential and as agents that may be subject to weaponisation.
The medical application of recombinant proteins for immunisation (passive and active), the use of recombinant growth factors for promotion of regeneration of damaged nerves and the emerging studies on neuronal stem cells will be highlightedwith respect to their potentialas agents of healing wounds sustained.

The lecture will examine the problem of rapidly expanding knowledge in molecular neurobiology, and the risks that arise from the factthat this knowledge because of its huge medicinal potential is being pursued in so many sites: academic and industrial that adequate control of efforts to weaponise some breakthroughs of this research are becoming difficult-although not impossible.

This situation is significantly different from that of the [previous decades when research into weaponisable agents affecting the nervous system has been carried out at few large centrally controlled sites in the world and thus in principle could easier been checked. It is also important to note that as the ability to produce weapons directed against the nervous system shifts to smaller actors, the agenda may significantly change from aiming at winning a war to terror, to back threats with demonstration of access to such weapons. These uses assume less emphasis on large scale testing and thus escape detection of programmes easier.

The rapid progress of biology - has great healing and devastating potential in the area of the nervous system actions -, that has to be continuously surveyed.