SWINOSTICS – Swine diseases field diagnostics toolbox

The increased population density in modern animal production systems has made them vulnerable to various transboundary infectious agents that threaten productivity of the meat industry. Early diagnosis and establishment of reliable countermeasures to infectious disease outbreaks is essential to limit severe biophysical and socio-economic consequences. The need for the development of mobile diagnostic systems, as point-of-care (POC) units has recently been recognized. Reliable and simple diagnostic testing directly on site would enable rapid local decision making which is crucial to prevent further spread of the disease. SWINOSTICS addresses these challenges and needs, by developing a novel field diagnostic device, based on advanced, proven, bio-sensing and photonics technologies to tackle emerging and endemic viruses causing epidemics in swine farms in Europe that lead to relevant economic damages. The diagnostic device will allow immediate threat assessment at the farm level, with the analytical quality of commercial and institutional laboratories. The device will be portable and will provide results in 10 minutes for 5 samples simultaneously, making it highly suitable for use in the field. The modular construction of the device would allow future upgrades to increase capacity if so desired. The technology will depend on antigen recognition by the antibodies directed against selected swine viruses. The antibodies will be immobilized on the nano-photonic structure and the binding of the specific analyte (antigen) to them leads to a change in the chemical and physical properties of the photonic resonating structure, expressed as a variation of their refractive index. The amount of shift in the transmission response can be related to the concentration of the target antigen. SWINOSTICS is being developed by a multi-disciplinary team, coordinated by CyRIC, Cyprus Research and Innovation Center Ltd, in the framework of EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme. The project has just been launched (1st November 2017) and will run for three and a half years, to allow enough time for the development and real-world validation of the technology. The overall concept underpinning the project is that of a device for early, field-based detection of important swine diseases (ASFV, PRRSV, H1N1, PPV, PCV2 and CSF). The device will use swine oral fluid samples as its main input, even though, it will be compatible with the use of other types of samples, such as faeces, blood or nasal swabs. The use of oral fluids as the main input diminishes the time needed for the analysis and simplifies the sample collection, allowing also the collection of wild boar samples. The project is funded by Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation for 2014–2020 under grant agreement No 771649. Project partners are listed in the affiliation section. &nbsp