Acquisition of an ultracentrifuge to support research in the field of veterinary infectious diseases

动物健康对加拿大农业的盈利能力、动物产品的质量、消费者的健康以及加拿大的公共健康都有重大影响。仅一种传染病，如猪繁殖和呼吸综合征，每年就给加拿大养猪业造成约1.5亿美元的损失。不幸的是，畜牧业不得不应对其他几种传染病。因此，改善加拿大家畜的动物健康状况对提高我国农业的可持续性至关重要。减少动物疾病的发生频率也很重要，以改善动物的健康和福利，这是重要的社会问题。蒙特利尔大学医学研究所(FMV)的10名研究人员是在动物传染病方面拥有国际声誉和长期专业知识的研究小组成员，这些小组包括生产动物传染病研究小组[GREMIP]和猪和家禽传染病研究中心[CRIPA]。GREMIP(FMV最大的研究基础设施)成立于80年代初，在此期间，获得了几种科学设备，用于在生物安全级别2(BSL2)环境中进行实验。自成立以来，GREMIP已经举行了三次超速离心机。不幸的是，较老的两台自2016年和2019年年中以来一直处于故障状态，而第三台最近开始出现间歇性故障问题。总体而言，FMV研究人员对超离心机的需求日益增长，同时也符合新的生物安全标准，这是非常重要的。这项提案中要求的超速离心机对于满足FMV微生物学家目前和未来的研究需求至关重要。我们的动物细菌学家、免疫学家、寄生虫学家和病毒学家的研究主题多种多样，包括：食品安全；抗菌素(和驱虫药)耐药性和抗生素使用的替代；抗病毒、疫苗和诊断测试的发展；以及体外/体内微生物发病机制。超速离心机是一种多用途科学仪器。因此，它是FMV研究人员定期使用的不可或缺的工具，用于许多不同的目的，如纳米颗粒和细菌表面/细胞壁组分的纯化。纳米颗粒是非常小的结构(&lt；300 nm)，类似于病毒、细胞外小泡和外切体。外体是由细胞(包括感染和患病的细胞)产生的囊泡，是分子的携带者，可以将信号传递给邻近的细胞，影响宿主对疾病的反应。纳米颗粒的提纯是FMV动物疾病研究项目成功的关键一步。因此，所要求的超速离心机是我们研究项目的重要工具，可以为高素质人才的培训做出重大贡献，即每年超过40名FMV本科生和研究生。

Animal health has a major impact on the profitability of Canadian agriculture, the quality of animal products, the health of consumers, and on the Canadian public health. Just one infectious disease like porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome causes around 150 millions dollars losses per year to the Canadian swine industry. Unfortunately, livestock industries have to deal with several other infectious diseases. Thus, it is crucial to improve the animal health status of the Canadian livestock to increase the sustainability of our agriculture. It is also important to reduce the frequency of animal diseases to improve the animal health and welfare, which are important societal issues. Ten researchers of the Faculté de médecine vétérinaire (FMV) at the Université de Montréal are members of research groups that possess international reputations and long-standing expertises in animal infectious diseases (Research Group on Infectious Diseases of Production Animals [GREMIP] and Swine and Poultry Infectious Disease Research Centre [CRIPA]. The GREMIP (the biggest research infrastructure at FMV) was founded in the early 80s and in that period, several kinds of scientific equipment were acquired to perform experiments in a biosecurity level 2 (BSL2) environment. Since its foundation, the GREMIP has been holding three ultracentrifuges. Unfortunately, the older two have been out of order since 2016 and mid 2019 while the third one recently started to have intermittent malfunction problems. Overall, the increasing needs of FMV researchers for an ultracentrifuge, that also meets the new biosecurity standards, are significant. The ultracentrifuge requested in this proposal is crucial to address the present and future research needs for the FMV microbiologists. Our animal bacteriologists, immunologists, parasitologists, and virologists' research topics are various and include: food safety; antimicrobial (and anthelmintic) resistance and alternative to antibiotic use; antiviral, vaccines and diagnostic tests development; and in vitro/in vivo microbial pathogenesis. The ultracentrifuge is a multipurpose scientific instrument. Thus, it is an indispensable tool used by FMV researchers on a regular basis for many different purposes like nanoparticles and bacterial surface/cell wall components purification. Nanoparticles are very small structures (<300 nm) like viruses, extracellular vesicles and exosomes. Exosomes are vesicles produced by cells (including infected and diseased cells) and are carriers of molecules that can transfer signals to neighboring cells, affecting the host response to diseases. Nanoparticles purification is a crucial step for the success of the FMV animal diseases research programs. Therefore, the requested ultracentrifuge is an essential tool for our research programs, allowing to contribute significantly to the training of highly qualified personnel, i.e. more than 40 FMV undergraduate and graduate students each year.