Viruses allegedly stolen from high-security lab cause stir in Brazil
The missing samples — reported to include chikungunya and dengue viruses — have been recovered, but questions linger over motive.
Brazil’s federal police arrested a researcher late last month for allegedly taking samples of viruses from a high-security biosafety laboratory at a leading Brazilian university. The researcher, Soledad Palameta Miller, a virologist at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), was released on bail on 24 March and faces charges including theft.
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Police have now recovered the missing samples — which included viruses such as chikungunya, dengue, and Epstein–Barr, according to the Brazilian news programme Fantástico — from other locations on Unicamp’s campus. Brazil’s National Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) said earlier this month that it had evaluated the recovered samples and that they did not pose a risk to people’s health.
But the news has caused a stir among members of the Brazilian virology community, who are wondering how the lapse could have happened at a lab designated biosafety-level-3 (BSL-3), the second-highest security classification.
The community is “perplexed”, says Paulo Sanches, a virologist at São Paulo State University in Araraquara, Brazil. “No sample can be removed from a lab with this biosafety level without authorization.” The news comes as Brazil is building support for the construction of its first BSL-4 lab — the highest level of biosafety facility — only a few kilometres away from Unicamp.
Miller did not respond to a request for comment from Nature. In a statement, Unicamp said that it is cooperating fully with the police and is conducting its own internal investigation.
Police investigation
The samples were allegedly stolen from Unicamp’s Laboratory of Virology and Applied Biotechnology. Such BSL-3 facilities are equipped with air filters and containment systems to allow researchers to safely study potentially lethal and inhalable pathogens. Sanches, who coordinates a separate BSL-3 laboratory in Brazil, says that access to this type of facility is tightly controlled.
Although incidents such as this one are not tracked in Brazil, they are likely to be extremely rare, Sanches says. For comparison, a US programme that tracks incidents at biosafety labs and publishes annual reports, hasn’t recorded any thefts since the reports began in 2015.
NEWS | ARP 14, 2026
