RESEARCH PROJECTS

Development and Validation of New Diagnostic Assays for Equine Viral Diseases

Our studies are focused on the development of both serologic and nucleic acid based technologies for the identification and characterization of viruses that are associated with equine infectious diseases.

(i). Detection of Antibodies to EAV by Microsphere Immunoassay (LuminexTM based): 

The serologic diagnosis of equine viral arteritis (EVA) is currently based on a virus microneutralization (VN) assay as described in the OIE Manual.  Several enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) recently have been described that detect antibodies to EAV, however none has yet gained widespread acceptance and the VN assay remains the gold standard for detection of serum antibodies to EAV.  The VN assay is time consuming (3-4 days), labor intensive and expensive.  Furthermore, it has recently been shown that some commercial inactivated equine herpesvirus 1 vaccine induce serum cytotoxicity that can interfere with accurate interpretation of the virus neutralization test. 

Therefore, our principal objective is to develop a rapid, sensitive and reliable immunological assay to detect antibodies to EAV in horses using a novel solution phase microsphere assay (using LuminexTM beads) based on a flow cytometric platform.

(ii). Development of Real-Time PCR-Based Diagnostic Assays for Detection of Virus Infections in Horses:

The primary objective of this study is to develop a very rapid, accurate, sensitive and comprehensive diagnostic assay to detect economically important equine viruses using the TaqMan® fluorogenic real-time PCR system.