REJECTION OF DEFUSE PROJECT PROPOSAL

Proposal Title:

DEFUSE - Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses (2018)

Proposal Identifier:HR001118S0017-PREEMPT-FP-019

Amounts Requested by EcoHealth Alliance:
Phase I
Phase II
Total:$8,411,546$5,797,699$14,209,245

RESULTThe DEFUSE proposed project by EHA was rejected by DARPA, although “if funding became
available”, certain components of particular interest could have gone ahead, subject to a clear
contractual Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) risk mitigation plan that ‘includes aresponsible communications plan’.

REASONS FOR REJECTION
The Biological Technologies Office of DARPA reviewed the EcoHealth Alliance DEFUSE
proposal and the Evaluation Reports and decided it was “selectable”. In doing so, two out of
three reviewers considered the aim of preempting “zoonotic spillover through reduction of viral
shedding in the bat caves” as of interest to DARPA. These reviewers assessed the EHA andCollaborators team and concluded that:-

They have plenty of prior experience.

-

They have access to Yunnan caves where bats are infected with SARSr viruses.

-

They have carried out past surveillance work

-They have developed geo-based risk maps of zoonotic hotspots-

Their proposed experimental work is logical and can validate molecular and evolutionarymodels.

-Their proposed preemption approaches can rapidly be validated using bat and"batenized" mouse models.

However, the Biological Technologies Office did not recommend it be funded at that time
because significant weaknesses were identified:Rejection Letter - Findings

p. 1/2

1. The proposal is considered to potentially involve GoF/DURC research because they
propose to synthesize spike glycoproteins which bind to human cell receptors and insert
them into SARSr-CoV backbones to assess whether they can cause SARS-like disease.
2. However the proposal does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function(GoF) research.
3. Nor does the proposal mention or assess Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC)
issues, and thus fails to present a DURC risk mitigation plan.
4. The proposal hardly addresses or discusses ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI).
5. The proposal fails to discuss problems with the proposed vaccine delivery systems
caused by the known issues of variability in vaccine dosage.
6. The proposal did not provide sufficient information about how EHA would use any dataobtained and how they would model development or perform any necessary statisticalanalysis.
7. The proposal did not explain clearly how EHA will take advantage of their previous work,
nor how that previous work could be extended.
8. The proposal failed to clearly assess how it would deploy and validate the “TA2preemption methods” in the wild. This refers to carrying out experiments with effective
immune boosting molecules and delivery techniques via FEA aerosolization mechanism
at one test and. two control bat cave sites in Yunnan, China (PARC, EHA, WIV).
9. The proposal does not address concerns about these vaccines not being able to protect
against the wide variety of coronaviruses in bat caves which are constantly evolving, due
to insufficient epitope coverage.
--DRASTIC independently assesses that the tone of the proposal (see for instance the ‘our cavecomplex’) and the deep suggested involvement of some of the WIV parties (Shi Zheng Li
employed half-time for 3 years - paid via the grant - and invited to DARPA headquarters atArlington), may not have helped either - especially in the absence of any DURC risk mitigation
program.
It is clear that the proposed DEFUSE project led by Peter Daszak could have put local
communities at risk by failing to consider the following issues:-Gain of Function
Dual Use Research of Concern
Vaccine epitope coverage
Regulatory requirements
ELSI (ethical, legal, and social issues)
Data Usage
END

Rejection Letter - Findingsp. 2/2