Texas A&M University at College Station has learned that it is out of the running in a national competition to operate a $450-million biodefense laboratory for the Department of Homeland Security. According to the Dallas Morning News, the university found out this week that it had not made the cut when the department pared a list of 18 applicants to five finalists. A winner in the competition to run the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility will be announced in 2008.

The university’s chancellor said the department probably had found it easy to eliminate A&M since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision last month to halt all federally supported research on the most dangerous infectious diseases at the university. That decision stemmed from A&M’s alleged failure to report two cases in which laboratory workers were exposed to dangerous microbes. —Andrew Mytelka