Recently, there has been a global epidemic of new and transformed infectious diseases, and the possibility of bio-terrorism has been increasing. Futurists are expecting the spread of pandemic disease and biological terrorism using high-risk pathogens to be a major cause of human catastrophes. Terrorism can occur with the aid of biochemical weapons worldwide, regardless of the time of exposure and it takes a lot of time to check the presence of infections and prepare after their occurrence. In particular, somewhat inadequate level of scientific and technological knowledge is required in the domestic chemical, biological, and radiological fields for the development of small and remote alarms for detection and identification, which should enhance the level of protection biological warfare. Therefore, Biodefense Research Center is planning and conducting the following studies:
Development of preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic technologies to preemptively respond to biological agent threats
Development of a wearable integrated biological defense system for the future soldier and its validation through a primate model
Research Areas
Development of brain disease models (stroke, dementia, Parkinson’s disease) with nonhuman primates
Novel mechanism of influenza viral pathogenesis through interactions with the host immune system
Differentiation of various organs with human stem cells and development of a system for the evaluation of drug efficacy and toxicity
Inter-kingdom genomics-inspired molecular understanding of host-microbe interactions for combating pathogens
Basic research on pandemic influenza, including surveillance and genetic characterization
Research on emerging and re-emerging viral infectious diseases
Targeted drug delivery system and therapeutic biomacromolecules (antibody/protein/gene)
Various aptamer-based opto-electronic sensor systems and DNA based nanotechnology
Research on the development of the point-of-care diagnosis device for detecting biochemical and toxic materials using bionanoelectronics
