At the top of the biosafety scale, Level 4 laboratories represent the frontline of defense against the world’s most dangerous animal and human diseases. Inside these highly secure facilities, scientists work to diagnose, research, manage and unlock solutions to infectious disease threats, strengthening global health and safeguarding the future of human life.
Globally, there is a desire, born from COVID-19 lessons learned, for countries to be able to manage highly infectious disease responses locally when possible. While each country and health organization has a unique mission, the underlying goals for these critical laboratories are the same: public safety and the ability to respond effectively to community health needs.
With projects underway across multiple continents, WSP’s high-containment lab planners have identified five themes driving the design of biosafety labs around the world.
1. Research
As part of the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials, the Orion project will be the first maximum-containment biological laboratory in Latin America. Additionally, Orion will be the only laboratory in the world connected to an electron accelerator, leveraging a synchrotron light source to enable detailed and advanced pathogen imaging analyses on high-risk pathogens like Ebola.
Research that takes place at Orion will strengthen Latin America’s healthcare infrastructure and advance Brazil’s capability in dealing with health crises, while also benefiting the development of diagnostic methods, vaccines, treatments and epidemiological strategies. Moreover, Orion will be available to the scientific community and public agencies, facilitating positive impact for health challenges beyond Brazil’s borders.
2. Community
In India, there exists a deep need to mitigate health issues throughout the country, including infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. Fewer biosafety labs that can tackle these challenges are available than are warranted by the needs of the population. Recognizing this deficit, private industry and the government partnered to create a design guide for new high-containment lab facilities, allowing for accelerated adaptation and implementation without sacrificing the safety or quality of laboratory facilities.
A new high-containment lab is currently under construction, with the goal of strengthening India’s ability to address outbreak preparedness, disease surveillance and research opportunities when the lab is completed at the end of 2027, serving ongoing community health needs nationwide.
3. Food safety
A zoonosis is a disease caused by pathogens, such as a virus, bacterium, parasite or fungus, that is infectious in both animals and humans, and includes salmonellosis, West Nile virus, emerging coronaviruses and high-containment agents like Nipah and Hendra.
A new multi-facility center for Animal and Plant Health for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs — a British equivalent to the USDA and now part of a network of national biosecurity centers — is underway to tackle those threats. Located in the United Kingdom, the facility is the agency’s main long-term domestic animal health studies site and the only one that will be able to deal with most dangerous zoonotic diseases.
Through this new science hub on the campus, farmers and food producers will now be better protected from diseases, food security will be strengthened and public health better safeguarded against future pandemics.
4. Diagnostics
Within the U.S., organizations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are focused on diagnostics, not only by developing diagnostic tests for use around the world but also advancing the science of identifying worldwide disease trends through solutions like genome sequencing. From a design perspective, the labs at these locations are highly flexible to meet both emerging pathogens and ways to study them. At an NIH lab in Maryland, for example, our team delivered a unique biocontainment lab that also accommodated medical imaging modalities, while the newest research building on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Atlanta campus will house eight labs designed and certified to facilitate diagnostic research on specific, high containment select agent viruses.
5. National wellness
Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030” government program aims to improve the population’s public health by empowering health infrastructure and driving economic growth in areas like biotechnology. A new high-containment lab in Riyadh — a combination of BSL-3 and BSL-4, along with an Animal BSL-3 — supports this national goal. The facility maximizes flexibility and redundancy to allow for increased workloads and changes in research in times of outbreak. Additionally, the lab is adaptable to future automation systems that would increase capacity and reduce human error.
Learn more about WSP’s work within the science sector.
