The Network of Animal Disease Infectiology and Research Facilities: Final Report

The aim of the NADIR project was to organise European animal infectiology centres to achieve economies of scale, modernise existing facilities and improve cooperation and complementarities. The project proposed to: - Set up an Internet-based platform designed to organise the collaboration between partners in a secure and optimal way and provide internal as well as external organisations with access to the network's infrastructures - Strengthen the exchange of best practices, training, and the validation of protocols - Coordinate the management of material resources, including animal lines, and in-house developed tools in relationship with related European project and initiatives - Jointly undertake research activities aimed at upgrading the services provided by NADIR infrastructures: characterise animal lines, customise imaging technologies, develop monitoring molecular tools and create new animal models. - Conceive, structure and manage transnational access to the NADIR infrastructures. The initial objectives were to prioritise Nadir research activities, to implement exchanges of resources between partners and to allow access to the 14 NADIR animal facilities. Eighteen meetings have been organised to complete these tasks from May 2009 to the end of the project in December 2013. Exchange of best practices has been initiated through the Biosafety/biosecurity/best practices meetings attended by Nadir partners and an invited institute (IVI, Mittelhaüsern, Berne). Very fruitful, these exchanges of experience between leading European institutes in the field allowed reaching a consensual report advising animal facilities for the containment of farm animal species infected with class 3 pathogens as well as for ethical aspects of experimental infections. During the second period, a range of training courses for improved use of animals has been conducted. Next to coordination of studies performed within the NADIR research activities and the transnational access, a listing of animal models available within the consortium was compiled The joint research activities of the project had been designed to sustain the improvement of the services provided by the infrastructures through (i) better characterisation of animal lines, (ii) progress in detection and diagnostic of diseases, (iii) development of infection process monitoring tools. It has produced more than 60 research publications and contributed to more than 80 communications. According to the first objective, chicken, sheep, pig and fish lines have been genotyped and the susceptibility of different animal lines have been assessed by infections with various pathogens., Several immunological tools specific for farm animals have been produced and their use optimised. In the frame of the second objective, experience in a telemetric transmission of physiological parameters that can be used to monitor the animal response to infectious diseases was exchanged between partners. Devices dedicated to these tasks have been compared and several have been successfully tested to be used in pigs and ruminant species. Imaging in vivo the infectious process in small animal species through fluorescent or bioluminescent markers has been achieved in pilot experiments conducted in a BSL3 animal facility. A number of new diagnostic procedures using immunological tools and molecular technologies (microarrays for pathogens and their host) were developed as well as multi-diagnostic assays for monitoring infection processes in animals. The Recent evolution of the European sanitary status and of institutes' objectives needed to prioritise a limited number of infectious diseases to work on. A common consensus was reached to prioritise emerging viral zoonoses. The documentation of cell culture systems and the challenge experiments of vector-borne disease agents in different host species were performed, in order to generate defined positive tissue samples, and to study the pathogenicity of these agents, which included the most relevant fish pathogens towards a better understanding of their species spectrum and transmissibility. The “Call for Transnational Access” allowing external users to perform experiments in the BSL3 facilities proposed by NADIR has been disseminated by partners and through the communication channels developed within the project. A blog-like website has been created and has been promoted through Linkedin Groups in order to increase the people in contact with NADIR. A total of 60 transnational access proposals from 16 European countries have been evaluated by the scientific panel and 43 have been realised and reported. Among these, four accesses were headed by private companies and 39 by public laboratories. The most frequent demands concerned studies on the pathogenesis of infectious diseases or vaccine development. Improvement of diagnostic and characterization of pathogen isolates was a second objective of many studies with the aim of developing an improved control of farm animal infectious diseases and zoonosis.