Portable Diagnostic System For Foot-and-mouth Disease And Avian Flu Designed

The initial focus of the technology will be on identifying foot-and-mouth disease and avian flu with a wide range of tests for other diseases to be made available after the initial systems are deployed. Smiths Detection has been working with the global reference centre for foot-and-mouth disease -- the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) -- to develop and validate the system.

The new portable device is specifically designed to be used by vets wherever livestock are kept and comprises a simple-to-use sample preparation cartridge and a rugged portable instrument. The technology employed is a novel form of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), a well established technique for the detection and analysis of infectious diseases.

The instrument is designed to run in harsh environments and, unlike typical laboratory PCR machines, requires no setting up by the operator between each test.

A wide variety of veterinary sample types can be analysed by the instrument and up to five independent tests can be run simultaneously. An analysis of the infection is available in under 90 minutes, enabling the vet to take swift action. The instrument can be decontaminated at the location, a critical feature in the control of disease outbreaks.

For the last three years, Smiths Detection has worked closely with the laboratory of Professor Larry Wangh at Brandeis University, near Boston, Massachusetts, that invented a novel DNA amplification and analysis technique called Linear After The Exponential PCR (LATE PCR). Smiths Detection holds an exclusive license to this technology.

LATE PCR provides significant improvements over traditional PCR techniques, in particular in its ability to identify multiple types of bacteria or virus in a single test and to determine accurately the strain of an individual infection. This latter characteristic is critical in Avian Influenza where discrimination between the pathogenic strain of H5N1 and more common forms of the disease, is vital.

Smiths Detection is working to develop additional assays for the same instrument, including one to detect the Blue Tongue virus.

The new system will be launched to vets at the World Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians conference in Australia in November 2007 and is expected to be in production in mid 2008.