Agilent Technologies has announced that a joint effort by researchers is helping to develop tools for rapidly characterising biological pathogens that could give rise to potentially deadly pandemics.
This is part of a joint effort by national laboratory-, university- and private-sector institutions.
The first tool, an automated genotyping system, is a joint effort between Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Public Health and Agilent.
This system will be utilised in the Global Bio Lab at UCLA and will use high-throughput technology for automated global-public-health surveillance.
The automated genotyping system, built to specification by Agilent, was delivered to Los Alamos in late May for verification of design and capability testing.
The USD1.7 Biocel Automation System was designed in collaboration by Los Alamos and UCLA researchers, and professionals at Agilent's Automation Solutions division, previously known as Velocity11.
The system will be able to automatically determine the genetic sequence of viruses such as influenza hundreds of times faster than any other method available.
By using this system and future high-throughput tools in pandemic response mode, public-health officials will be able to rapidly and reliably determine the strain of a virus, allowing more time for mitigation or containment strategies to be employed if necessary.
Moreover, these Biocel systems will be useful in research mode for monitoring animal populations for the emergence of new and potentially deadly pathogens before the pathogens are able to infect humans.
The UCLA Global Bio Lab will become part of the High Throughput Laboratory Network (HTLN).
When built out, the network will provide an international and interconnected capacity that enables uniformity in testing methods, reducing the potential for errors or confusion arising from variable testing methodologies currently used.
Current genetic identification methods require lots of time and manpower.
The new genotyping system features two robots and the ability to fully sequence 10,000 or more influenza viruses per year.
This makes it much faster and more reliable than current methods, and reduces the amount of manpower necessary to process a large number of samples.
Agilent will deliver the system to UCLA, where researchers will operate the system for public-health research and surveillance, and train others to use the new tool.
If necessary, the system has surge capacity and the ability to test samples in response to a pandemic should the need arise.
LANL and UCLA researchers are currently determining protocols for culturing and screening processes that can be used with the high-throughput laboratory.
Establishing such protocols is the next step toward making the Global Bio Lab at UCLA fully operational.
