Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** avian influenza virus (AIV) can…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** avian influenza virus (AIV) can be transmitted by migrating birds over long distances, and AIV outbreaks can pose a major threat to commercial poultry worldwide. The united states is suffering from an ongoing AIV outbreak, which has resulted in a loss of >58 million birds. The last AIV outbreak in the united states (2014) resulted in a loss of 50 million poultry, a direct loss of $1.6 billion, and additional recovery cost estimated at $1.7 billion. The cost of the current outbreak is still forthcoming. While some strains of AIV pose a relatively low risk, the greatest risk comes from AIV subtypes H5 and H7, which can become highly pathogenic avian influenza (hpai) and cause deadly outbreaks. One favorable method to diagnose AIV is the enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay (elisa), which detects antibodies from blood samples. Elisa is preferrable because IT is relatively faster and less expensive than alternative methods. However, AIV elisas that are used to screen commercial poultry require a second lab test to identify AIV subtypes H5 and H7. There is no commercially available elisa that can diagnose AIV subtypes H5 and H7. Therefore, our project goal is to develop an elisa to diagnose AIV subtypes H5 and H7, which can improve the time and cost of responding to a deadly AIV outbreak. New elisa tools will be easily integrated into the current infrastructure and could have an immediate impact for AIV surveillance and prevention in the poultry industry. Our team previously conducted research and development for competitive elisa (celisa) to detect chicken and turkey antibodies against AIV subtypes H5 and H7. We have developed an H5 celisa and an H7 celisa prototype, which are at different stages of development. This project will focus on continuing to develop the H5 and H7 celisa by using laboratory approaches that will improve their diagnostic performance. We will collaborate with canada's national center for foreign animal disease (cfad), which will provide US with exceptional support to evaluate each celisa. Samples from different countries will be evaluated to address the issue of AIV originating from migratory birds over long distances. The cfad maintains a collection of samples from poultry infected with american, eurasian, and african AIV subtypes, historic samples collected from past outbreaks, and samples collected from the current outbreaks in north american (canada, U.S., and mexico). Our project will result in bringing the H5 and H7 celisa prototypes to an advanced stage of development, which will allow US to pursue a phase II project for large-scale global validation and commercialization.