The Facility
The PHE laboratories at Porton have high-containment laboratories and facilities for in vivo studies with BSL3 pathogens and expertise in the aerosol delivery of pathogens and therapeutics and advanced imaging under high containment. The facility comprises non-pathogenic and pathogen containment sections with 40 multi-species rooms that can be operated up to BSL3. The delivery of nose-only aerosols to mice, guinea pigs, ferrets and macaques and their subsequent housing in social groups is a unique capability. PHE owns on-site breeding colonies of rhesus and cynomolgus macaques. The department has expertise and infrastructure to support bacterial and viral analysis, and the detailed evaluation of cellular and serological immune responses including flow cytometry and cell sorting, Luminex multiplex platforms, real time PCR, microarrays, comprehensive histological staining, immunohistochemistry and in-situ hybridisation. Services currently offered: We offer contract research based on the well-characterised animal models and infrastructure described above, which has been used in several EU projects. We carry out translational research programmes to develop infectious disease vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics using animal models of tuberculosis, influenza, HIV/AIDS, Clostridium difficile, meningococcal disease, chlamydia, burkholderia and anthrax, as well as emerging viral diseases such as Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever.