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Formation | 1987 |
---|---|
Legal status | Government-funded research institute (registered charity) |
Purpose | Farm animal health and diseases in the UK |
Location | |
Region served | United Kingdom |
Membership | Around 350 staff – half researchers, half operations |
Director | Bryan Charleston |
Parent organization | BBSRC |
Affiliations | DEFRA |
Budget | c. £30 million |
Website | www |
Formerly called | Institute for Animal Health |
The Pirbright Institute (formerly the Institute for Animal Health) is a research institute in Surrey, England, dedicated to the study of infectious diseases of farm animals. It forms part of the UK government's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). The institute employs scientists, vets, PhD students, and operations staff.
It began in 1914 to test cows for tuberculosis. More buildings were added in 1925. Compton was established by the Agricultural Research Council in 1937. Pirbright became a research institute in 1939 and Compton in 1942. The Houghton Poultry Research Station at Houghton, Cambridgeshire was established in 1948. In 1963 Pirbright became the Animal Virus Research Institute and Compton became the Institute for Research on Animal Diseases. The Neuropathogenesis Unit (NPU) was established in Edinburgh in 1981. This became part of the Roslin Institute in 2007.[ citation needed ]
In 1987, Compton, Houghton and Pirbright became the Institute for Animal Health, being funded by BBSRC. Houghton closed in 1992, operations at Compton ended in 2015. [1] [2] The Edward Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research was sited at Compton until October 2005, when it merged with the vaccine programmes of the University of Oxford and the Institute for Animal Health. [3]
The Pirbright site was implicated in the 2007 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak, with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) concluding that a local case of the disease was a result of contaminated effluent release either from the Pirbright Institute or the neighbouring Merial Animal Health laboratory. [4]
Significant investment (over £170 million) took place at Pirbright with the development of new world-class laboratory and animal facilities.[ citation needed ] The institute has been known as "The Pirbright Institute" since October 2012.
On 14 June 2019 the largest stock of the rinderpest virus was destroyed at the Pirbright Institute. [5]
The work previously carried out at Compton has either moved out to the university sector, ended or has been transferred to the Pirbright site. The Compton site currently carries out work on endemic (commonplace) animal diseases including some avian viruses and a small amount of bovine immunology whilst Pirbright works on exotic (unusual) animal diseases (usually caused by virus outbreaks). Pirbright has national and international reference laboratories of diseases. It is a biosafety level 4 laboratories (commonly referred to as "P4" or BSL-4).
25% of its income comes from a core grant from the BBSRC of around £11 million. Around 50% comes from research grants from related government organisations, such as DEFRA, or industry and charities (such as the Wellcome Trust). The remaining 25% comes from direct payments for work carried out.[ citation needed ]
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided funding to the institute for research into veterinary infectious diseases and universal flu vaccine development. [7] [8] [9]
The Pirbright Institute carries out research, diagnostics and surveillance of viruses carried predominantly by farm animals, such as foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV), African swine fever, bluetongue, lumpy skin disease and avian and swine flu. Understanding of viruses comes from molecular biology. [10]
It carries out surveillance activities on farm animal health and disease movement in the UK.
The institute had two sites:
Bluetongue disease is a noncontagious, insect-borne, viral disease of ruminants, mainly sheep and less frequently cattle, yaks, goats, buffalo, deer, dromedaries, and antelope. It is caused by Bluetongue virus (BTV). The virus is transmitted by the midges Culicoides imicola, Culicoides variipennis, and other culicoids.
Pirbright is a village in Surrey, England. Pirbright is in the borough of Guildford and has a civil parish council covering the traditional boundaries of the area. Pirbright contains one buffered sub-locality, Stanford Common near the nation's farm animal disease research institute. The village's grade II* listed medieval church has a large Boulder grave for explorer Henry Morton Stanley. The nearby section of Hodge Brook is also known as the Congo Stream, between Ruwenzori Hills and Stanley Pool.
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, is a non-departmental public body (NDPB), and is the largest UK public funder of non-medical bioscience. It predominantly funds scientific research institutes and university research departments in the UK.
The Edward Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research (EJIVR) was an independent research institute named after Edward Jenner, the inventor of vaccination. It was co-located with the Compton Laboratory of the Institute for Animal Health on a campus in the village of Compton in Berkshire, England. After occupying temporary laboratory space at the Institute for Animal Health from 1996, the Institute moved to a newly completed laboratory building in 1998. Funding of the Institute continued until October 2005 when it was closed.
Walter Plowright CMG FRS FRCVS was an English veterinary scientist who devoted his career to the eradication of the cattle plague rinderpest. Plowright received the 1999 World Food Prize for his development of tissue culture rinderpest vaccine (TCRV), the key element in the quest to eliminate rinderpest. Rinderpest became the first animal disease to be eliminated worldwide.
Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health is a multinational animal health company, formed in January 2017 when Merial was acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim and merged with Boehringer Ingelheim's existing animal health assets.
Bovine malignant catarrhal fever (BMCF) is a fatal lymphoproliferative disease caused by a group of ruminant gamma herpes viruses including Alcelaphine gammaherpesvirus 1 (AlHV-1) and Ovine gammaherpesvirus 2 (OvHV-2) These viruses cause unapparent infection in their reservoir hosts, but are usually fatal in cattle and other ungulates such as deer, antelope, and buffalo. In Southern Africa the disease is known as snotsiekte, from the Afrikaans.
The 2007 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak occurred when the discharge of infectious effluent from a laboratory in Surrey led to foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) infections at four nearby farms. The infections were detected via regular livestock testing by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
The rabies vaccine is a vaccine used to prevent rabies. There are several rabies vaccines available that are both safe and effective. Vaccinations must be administered prior to rabies virus exposure or within the latent period after exposure to prevent the disease. Transmission of rabies virus to humans typically occurs through a bite or scratch from an infectious animal, but exposure can occur through indirect contact with the saliva from an infectious individual.
Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or hoof-and-mouth disease (HMD) is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that primarily effects even-toed ungulates, including domestic and wild bovids. The virus causes a high fever lasting two to six days, followed by blisters inside the mouth and near the hoof that may rupture and cause lameness.
Dr. Simon Carpenter, Head of the Entomology and Modelling Group in the Vector-borne Diseases Programme at the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Institute for Animal Health’s Pirbright Laboratory in Woking, Surrey, is an entomologist who was awarded the first Rooker Prize in 2009 in recognition of his research on biting midges that transmit bluetongue virus (BTV), the causative agent of bluetongue disease, an important orbivirus disease of ruminants.
The Roslin Institute is an animal sciences research institute at Easter Bush, Midlothian, Scotland, part of the University of Edinburgh, and is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
The National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease (NCFAD), located in the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is part of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s National Centres for Animal Disease. NCFAD is co-located with the Public Health Agency of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory.
Polly Roy OBE is a professor and Chair of Virology at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She attended a number of schools which included Columbia University Medical School, Rutgers University, University of Alabama, and University of Oxford. In 2001 she became a part of The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and, along with being the chair of Virology, is also the co-organiser of the medical microbiology course. The virus that she has dedicated most of her career to is Bluetongue disease that affects sheep and cattle. She became interested in this virus after attending a symposium and was intrigued by the fact that not much was known about the virus that was causing such a nasty and sometimes fatal disease.
John Burns Brooksby was a Scottish veterinarian, animal physiologist and veterinary virologist. He was a recognised expert on serology and especially foot-and-mouth disease, and identified and categorised the majority of its known forms. His advice was taken on an international level, and he played a significant role in disease control in Africa and the Middle East.
Gopal Dhinakar Raj is an Indian veterinary scientist, an academic and the project director of the Translational Research Platform for Veterinary Biologicals, a partnership program between the Department of Biotechnology and the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University. Known for the development of diagnostic test kits for animal and poultry diseases such as Leptospirosis and Egg drop syndrome, Raj is a member of the DBT Task Force on Animal Biotechnology. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences in 2007.
The Jenner Institute is a research institute on the Old Road Campus in Headington, east Oxford, England. It was formed in November 2005 through a partnership between the University of Oxford and the UK Institute for Animal Health. It is associated with the Nuffield Department of Medicine, in the Medical Sciences Division of Oxford University. The institute receives charitable support from the Jenner Vaccine Foundation.
The Houghton Poultry Research Station was a poultry disease research station in northern Cambridgeshire.
The National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI) is a research institute in Nigeria that was established in 1924 and has the mandate to conduct research into how to ably identify, treat and control animal diseases as well as the development of vaccines for such and training and the provision of support services to livestock and poultry farmers. The institute is under the supervision of Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The chief executive is Maryam Muhammad, a veterinary doctor with research interests in the molecular epidemiology of Salmonella in poultry, public health and environment and development.
Peter Martin Biggs FRS was a British scientist who specialised in avian infectious disease. He is known particularly for his work on Marek's disease in poultry, and the development of a vaccine for the virus-caused disease.
The Edward Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research would move into a new era on November 1, 2005, merging with the vaccine programmes of the University of Oxford and the Institute for Animal Health (IAH). It would be led by Professor Adrian Hill, and would focus on human vaccine development at Oxford University and veterinary vaccines at the IAH.