Rocky Mountain Laboratories could not be located in a more scenic place: Hamilton, Montana, population 5,000.  

"I think it's unique to have a lab of this quality in a town of this size in a small community," said Dr. Marshall Bloom, associate director for scientific management at Rocky Mountain Labs, a Biosafety Level 4 installation run by the National Institutes of Health.

"It's really a unique facility," he said.

It's been around for over a century. It made its name by identifying a tick-borne disease called Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

"Nobody knew what caused it then," Bloom said. "It was completely unknown."

Since then, RML has conducted research on a wide array of infectious agents like Q Fever and Lyme disease, work that makes clinical trials possible. We spotlighted its work on an Ebola vaccine in 2014. Now, largely out of the limelight, RML is at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. At least half a dozen research teams are focused on the disease. Relying on its past work on other coronaviruses, RML quickly reproduced this one in live animal cells. Rhesus macaque monkeys in its lab were given ​a promising vaccine candidate from Oxford University, then infected with the virus.

"The monkeys get sick," Bloom said. "It is more like a moderate form of the disease rather than a severe fatal disease in all cases… That's a very encouraging development."

Monkeys have also been used to test the antiviral drug remdesivir. RML developed a way to disinfect N95 respirator masks. Using an electron microscope and some color enhancement, Bloom’s colleagues have also given the world a glimpse of this deadly pathogen.

"The photographs that they've produced have been very very dramatic and they have captured this virus in action," he said. "It provides a real graphic backdrop for explaining the virus to people."

The lab's main focus though remains identifying the platform for a vaccine that will prove robust and durable against this disease.

"I'm optimistic that one of the vaccine candidates which is being tested is going to prove to be worthwhile," Bloom said, looking ahead.

He stressed that it's important to work fast but carefully. Although two-thirds of staff are doing that work from home these days, Rocky Mountain Laboratories is on the coronavirus case at this unusual time, in its very unique environment. 

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