Bioterrorism
New tool can support biosurveillance
When disease threatens our food chain, time is of the essence. The diagnosis is critical. A single carrier can result in substandard product, infect many other valuable animals, affect multiple industries of entire regions and eventually the health, safety and economic stability of entire countries. Whether in a naturally occurring diseases or a terrorist attack by the intentional spread of pathogens, early detection of a disease outbreak is critical. The need for innovative, fast, on-site diagnostic technology is evident to preserve animal and human health.
AAD believes that the best way to address the threat of biohazards is to create a decentralized, point-of-care, diagnostic network. Such a network allows producers to quickly determine, on-site, when a herd has been exposed to specific pathogens. The practical solution in a farm environment is to rely on the response of the animal’s own immune system to tell us it has been attacked.
Research to date has demonstrated that AAD technology can measure the basic inflammatory cell response and the antibody immune response. AAD will expand on that demonstrated capability by measuring, on-site, the cell-mediated immune response. In addition to monitoring disease outbreaks, this technology could also allow producers to confirm the efficacy of their vaccinations based on the animal’s immune response.
The direct application of this technology is as a diagnostic tool to help combat agricultural biohazards. However, the impact of our technology is broader and goes beyond homeland security. Because of the special requirements of on-site farm testing, our research constitutes a shift in veterinary methodologies away from classical or DNA-based microbiology and cell surface antibody-based flow cytometry to an emphasis on minute in vitro, chemical, cytochemical and morphological cellular changes of the animals’ own immune response as a way to identify exposure to infectious organisms.