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CENTER OF EXCELLENCE
ZADD Research Spotlight
ZADD continues to make significant contributions to the Nation's understanding of defenses against zoonotic and animal diseases. A few key research highlights are listed below, with links to external sites for more information.
Rift Valley Fever (RVF) research: vaccines, detection, and epidemiology/modeling: The RVF virus is considered one of the most significant threats to the U.S. agriculture and public health sectors. ZADD researchers are developing vaccines against the RVF virus for use in sheep and cattle; assays to diagnose the RVF virus and rule out similar causes; and predictive risk-assessment models, all to make the nation more resilient against the threats posed by the RVF virus.
Emergency Response Support System (ERSS): Outbreaks of exotic animal diseases present a complex challenge for decision makers. Incident commanders require immediate access to both historical information and emerging data. The ERSS technology provides methods for consolidating and synchronizing this data, as well as shared situational awareness among decision makers at different levels of government with diverse functional responsibilities. ERSS works with the Secure Egg Supply “FASTeggs” decision support tool to aid in allowing movement of poultry and egg products and maintain continuity of business during a disease outbreak.
Unbiased pathogen detection methods: Unknown novel and synthetic infectious agents are a significant threat. Unbiased High-throughput Pyrosequencing (UHTP) methods provide the capacity to detect biological threats that are newly emerging, previously unknown, genetically engineered, or synthetic. UHTP is a proven method that has been used to discover several new human viruses. ZADD researchers are adapting it to detect infectious agents in samples from unresolved veterinary diagnostic cases that are suspected to have resulted from novel pathogens.