 Meet Dr. Frank Plummer. He's a renowned HIV researcher and the former head of the National Microbiology Lab of Canada. We asked him about his start at the lab, the importance of the facility, and the challenges he faced there. I became sign of director of the National Microbiology Lab, which is part of the Public Health Agency of Canada in 1980, and that was a left canyon move back to Winnipeg. I continued the research in Kenya, but I thought I needed a more sophisticated laboratory approach in order to get where I wanted to go rather than working in the field in Kenya. It was an interesting challenge. The lab when I took it over was very new, and it had relocated from Ottawa to Winnipeg, and only, I think, something like 25 people moved from Ottawa to Winnipeg. So the lab was kind of underutilized, underpopulated, and I had a big building job to do, which was a unique challenge and a very exciting opportunity. And the lab was responsible for all aspects of public health related to infectious diseases, from bacteria and foodborne problems to deadly viruses like Ebola. It has the only Level 4 program in Canada and one of the very few in the world. So we became a focal point for any infectious disease outbreak especially when the agents unknown. The first big thing that we dealt with was SARS in 2003, when this new virus that had never been seen in humans before suddenly appeared first in China, and then by the time we had recognized that there was something of this nature going on in China, it was in Toronto and Vancouver. This severe respiratory illness was undiagnosable using tests for agents that we knew about. So we pretty quickly knew that this is something totally new and had to take a different approach. So it was first isolated, SARS virus, it was first isolated by the Center for Disease Control in the U.S. and then we isolated it shortly after that, like a day or two later. That may have set off on a race, basically, to sequence this virus, to sequence the whole genome. In collaboration with the University of British Columbia Center for Genome Sciences, we were the first, and Canada was the first, to sequences. And it was a very, very exciting time. Very exciting time to discover this virus and figure out what to do about it and develop new diagnostic tools, and then the scientific race to sequence the virus was also very exciting. And after that, we went through a number of scares related to influenza, which is as you as many people have heard, you know, a pandemic on influenza is one of the most feared thing in infectious diseases. The 1918 flu killed many millions of people around the world. We had a pretty severe test of that in 2009 when this H1N1 influenza virus, which was totally new, emerged first in California, and then had a big outbreak in in Mexico City. And we helped the Mexicans with their response. But by the time we knew it was in Mexico, it was already in Canada. There were cases in Nova Scotia, so it happened just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And it was basically, we were the ones that more or less found a pandemic, because it had already been reported in the U.S. But we found it in Mexico, we found it in Canada, and then we knew it was pretty much going to be everywhere. In terms of preparedness for this kind of thing is extremely important. You need to have the scientific ability to respond to it, to make new diagnostic tests, to test new therapies, to make vaccines, hopefully. And I think Canada is very well prepared. The National Microbiology Lab is one of the best in the world, if not the best in the world, to illustrate how important the lab is in sort of the national and global response to these kind of threats. We've done three very innovative things to come out of the lab, not by me, but by others. So the first innovation was to develop mobile laboratories, sort of lab in a suitcase, or lab in 12 suitcases, really. They can take the lab to the patient rather than take a specimen to a lab somewhere in the United States or Canada. And that has been incredibly important in the responding to these outbreaks of viral hemorrhage of Ebola and Marburg. Because that shortens the time it takes to distinguish who has Ebola, which then you can take appropriate action to isolate them and treat them, or has something else, and would then be separated from those that have Ebola. The second innovation was the development of a vaccine for Ebola, which I think most others think that it's the most promising vaccine candidate out there. And it was developed using a virus called vesicular stomatitis virus, which is an infection of cows. It can infect people, but it doesn't really cause any problems. And putting an Ebola gene in there so that it fools the body into thinking they've seen Ebola and that they develop appropriate immune response to that Ebola protein. And it protects monkeys from challenge 100% of the time if they're vaccinated before the challenge with Ebola. And you can even have an effect post-exposure, so if somebody gets exposed to Ebola, you can still up to about over animals get exposed to Ebola. Even up to three days later, there's still a very significant effect. So it can be used as kind of a therapy as well. The third innovation was something called ZMAP or ZMAP, which is a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies that were put together at the National Microbiology Lab by a very creative scientist called Gary Colbinger. The two of the antibodies that are in this cocktail were produced at the National Microbiology Lab and the other was produced at the US Army Institute for Infectious Disease Research in Washington. This cocktail is very effective in preventing Ebola infection in animal models and in treating it in animal models. And it has been used a few times in people, most notably during this current Ebola outbreak, when an American physician and an American nurse got Ebola as they were looking after patients in Sierra Leone. And they received this treatment and from what I've heard and seen, it basically saved their lives. So there's a big rush on now to produce lots of this ZMAP to respond to the current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa.