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

购买超速离心机以支持兽医传染病领域的研究

• 批准号: RTI-2021-00306
• 负责人: Gagnon, Carl
• 金额: $ 10.16万
• 依托单位: Université de Montréal
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Research Tools and Instruments
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=717687
• 关键词: Acquisition; ultracentrifuge; support; research; field

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.

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卫生都有重大影响。仅一种传染病，如猪繁殖与呼吸综合征，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，畜牧业必须处理其他几种传染病。因此，改善加拿大牲畜的动物健康状况以提高我们农业的可持续性至关重要。减少动物疾病的发生频率以改善动物健康和福利也很重要，这是重要的社会问题。蒙特利尔大学兽医学院（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（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]）的成员。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，在生物安全2级（BSL 2）环境中进行实验。自成立以来，GREMIP已经举行了三次超级会议。不幸的是，旧的两个自2016年和2019年年中以来一直处于故障状态，而第三个最近开始出现间歇性故障问题。总的来说，FMV研究人员对同时符合新的生物安全标准的超浓缩物的需求越来越大。本提案中要求的超浓缩物对于满足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课题是各种各样的，包括：食品安全;抗菌剂（和驱虫剂）耐药性和抗生素使用的替代品;抗病毒，疫苗和诊断测试开发;和体外/体内微生物发病机制。超级离心机是一种多用途的科学仪器。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/细胞壁成分纯化。纳米颗粒是非常小的结构（<300 nm），如病毒，细胞外囊泡和外来体。外泌体是由细胞（包括感染和患病细胞）产生的囊泡，并且是可以将信号传递到邻近细胞的分子的载体，从而影响宿主对疾病的反应。纳米颗粒的纯化是FMV动物疾病研究计划成功的关键步骤。因此，所要求的超级计算机是我们研究计划的重要工具，可以为高素质人才的培训做出重大贡献，即每年有40多名FMV本科生和研究生。