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公众的健康都有重大影响。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，畜牧业必须应对其他几种传染病。因此，改善加拿大牲畜的动物健康状况以增加我们农业的可持续性是至关重要的。减少动物疾病的发生频率，改善动物健康和福利也是重要的社会问题。蒙特莱姆大学的<s:1> <s:1> <s:1> <s:1> <s:1> <s:1> <s:1> <s:1> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -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，以便在生物安全级别2 （BSL2）的环境中进行实验。自成立以来，GREMIP已经拥有了三个超离心机。不幸的是，自2016年和2019年年中以来，老两个已经出了故障，而第三个最近开始出现间歇性故障问题。总的来说，FMV研究人员对超离心机的需求日益增加，同时也符合新的生物安全标准，这是重要的。本提案中所要求的超离心机对于解决FMV微生物学家当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多种多样，包括：食品安全；抗微生物（和驱虫药）耐药性和抗生素使用替代方案；开发抗病毒药物、疫苗和诊断测试；以及体外/体内微生物发病机制。超离心机是一种多用途的科学仪器。因此，它是FMV研究人员经常使用的不可缺少的工具，用于许多不同的目的，如纳米颗粒和细菌表面/细胞壁成分的纯化。纳米颗粒是非常小的结构（<300 nm），如病毒、细胞外囊泡和外泌体。外泌体是由细胞（包括感染和患病细胞）产生的囊泡，是分子的载体，可以将信号传递给邻近细胞，影响宿主对疾病的反应。纳米颗粒的纯化是FMV动物疾病研究项目成功的关键一步。因此，所要求的超离心机是我们研究项目的重要工具，可以为培养高素质人才做出重大贡献，即每年有40多名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.