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Issue 52 | May 2009
In 'outbreak' mode, these
specially designed de-clotting
stations allow researchers to
safely remove clots from
a serum sample
The Diagnostic Emergency Response Laboratory (DERL) was officially opened by the Federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator the Hon Kim Carr, on 23 July 2008. Watch as Dr Martyn Jeggo, Director of the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL), takes you on a virtual tour of this new state-of-the-art laboratory.
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Watch the video [Windows Media Streaming video 3m:50s] |
The core responsibility of CSIRO Livestock Industries' AAHL is to respond to outbreaks of emergency animal diseases such as foot and mouth disease or equine influenza.
DERL is capable of processing more samples, faster, in the event of an emergency animal disease (EAD) outbreak and is located within the AAHL's advanced high biocontainment facility in Geelong, Victoria.
In the face of an outbreak the laboratory will become an assembly line for samples and will enable AAHL staff to perform serology tests on up to
10 000 samples per day, with maximum biosecurity.
At the official opening of DERL in July 2008, Minister Carr said the new emergency response laboratory had given the Australian Government further confidence that AAHL and the nation would be ready to detect and quickly respond to an EAD outbreak.
AAHL is a world leading research facility and since its establishment has been involved in a number of significant discoveries, including the identification of the paramyxovirus Hendra virus in 1994.
In recent years, some $55 million has been invested into AAHL, from the Australian Government and external revenue, to ensure the facility continues to operate as one of the world's leading high biocontainment laboratories.
The Australian Government provided $5 million through CSIRO to construct DERL and $0.5 million through the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry for equipment. AAHL is funded by the Australian Government through CSIRO and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF). The facility also generates external revenue.
CSIRO Livestock Industries
Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL)
Diagnostic Emergency Response Laboratory (DERL)
The Federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator the Hon Kim Carr, officially opened DERL on 23 July 2008.
The new 'state of the art' laboratory will be able to process more samples, faster, in the event of an emergency animal disease outbreak and is located within the AAHL's advanced high biocontainment facility.
Tour begins in the Secure receiving area
Hi everyone. I do hope that you can hear and see me and to help you follow me through this virtual tour of DERL, we've created a small map here which at any one point of time, shows you where I am.
Now currently, I'm in that area of DERL which is in the non-secure area that we maintain during the routine use of this laboratory and so on a day to day basis samples would come into this new area of DERL, but it is not part of the biosecure area and so here we have a laminar flow pass box in which we can take these samples and pass them in to the new biosecure area of DERL.
However, one of the innovations we've introduced into this new laboratory is an ability to turn this part of this sampling area here into a biosecure laboratory in the event of a major outbreak. At that point in time, we would make major changes to air handling and to effluent control so that this becomes part of our routine bioecurity area. Of course, once that happens, this is now inside the secure area of AAHL and so we have a second laminar pass through box here in which we can provide samples during that outbreak mode from what would then become the outside area into this biosecure area of AAHL.
Of course today, it's in routine use, it's outside the biosecure area. So for me now to continue with the virtual tour, I need to move from the non-biosecure of AAHL into our new DERL laboratory, most of which is in that biosecurity mode. So if you'll bear with me for a few moments, I will now move from the non-secure area into the secure area.
Okay, while I'm now going to the secure area, I would like you to see the complex air handling system that enables DERL to switch from routine to outbreak mode. There's an amazing arrangement of stainless steel secure ducting HEPA for filters and control isolating valves, all of which working together enables DERL to make that switch from one mode to another, routine to outbreak. Please have a look at this while I'm moving into the secure area.
Specimen accessions area
Hi everyone, I'm now within the biosecure area of DERL which is within the framework of the high containment laboratory at AAHL. If at any point in time you get lost here, don't forget to refer to this map down here which will give you an indication of where I am in this virtual tour. Now as we mentioned earlier, samples arrive in the non-secure area at the other side of this wall and are passed through this laminar flow pass box where they can be retrieved and we then take them and catalogue them and process them prior to testing.
One of the lessons that was learnt during the foot and mouth outbreak in Pirbright UK was the considerable amounts of time that's taken in processing samples, in cataloguing them, unpacking them and getting them ready for testing. And so we have a large number of computers to help us with this. One of the technologies that we've been able to introduce here is the use of bar coding and you will see that we have all our samples here with a bar code on them that enables us to get them into the computerised system fairly effectively. And I should mention that this whole laboratory information management system which we've now installed was supported by a grant from the Commonwealth Government through DAFF, some two or three years ago. You will see some computers here but in fact if you look through this window here, we've got even further numbers of computers, so that we really can deal with a large number of samples that could be needed in an outbreak.
Now as I mentioned, during the routine use, this is a functioning laboratory and in fact, once we have this laboratory fully up and running, I would be of course wearing safety glasses and appropriate overalls but for today, I'm dressed in this manner in DERL.
I'd like to just show you here some of the additional apparatus that we would use on a routine use and you can see here some microscopes on the benchside here that will enable us to look more carefully at samples and use such techniques as flourescent anti-body techniques.
Taking you back then to our large number of samples which we've now got to process, many of these will in fact be serum samples and we will have to remove the clots from them. This is a potentially bio-hazard operation and so we've specifically designed an area within DERL to manage these large numbers of samples, our de-clotting area and I'll take you through the de-clotting area now.
De-clotting area
Okay, now we're in our outbreak mode, de-clotting room and we have here one of these specially designed de-clotting workstations. Removing clots from a serum sample, poses a particularly bio-hazard risk, particularly if we think in terms of foot and mouth virus, and so we need to manage both the clot itself and the aerosol that's created as we remove that clot. This workstation allows both those hazards to be addressed. There's an area underneath where we can simply collect the clot and we have above the hood an area that collects the aerosol and takes it out through HEPA filters and removes any virus or infection that we would not want in the aerosol. The clot underneath can then be very simply removed as we slide out the bucket that contains the clot and we can take that off for auto-claving, a very simple way of managing what is potentially a serious bio-hazard. In routine mode this area here, of course would not be needed with these clotting hoods and so we then have the ability to remove the clotting hoods and put on these single desk top which would enable this to become a nice laboratory space to work in, and in fact, we will be using this for bacteriology. Okay, now that we've removed the clot from these samples, we've now got to process them. And here we would take them over to this window here and these samples would then be moved through to our high throughput robotics area.
Robotics Area
Okay, so here we have our specialised robotics area which we can use both in a routine and in an outbreak mode and you see here a range of robotic equipment, much of which was funded in the last two to three years through DAFF and the Commonwealth Government. I have here a sample, this platform here for example, can take our serum samples and dilute them onto the ELISA plates and this particular bed here can process under computer control up to 10,000 samples a day.
But these platforms don't only deal with serum. They can also deal with looking causative agent and antigen testing and so we have further platforms up here that gives us some molecular technology capability in using such platforms. And all of this brought together, gives us a tremendous surge capacity when dealing with major outbreaks of disease. Once the sera has been diluted on our robotics platform, we can then take it into other specialised areas of DERL for further testing and now I'll take you to one of those areas where we do that type of testing.
ELISA work area
Okay, so we've finished our samples in the robotics area, we then bring these samples over for testing in our specialised testing area and here, for example, is an ELISA reader. Now with this piece of apparatus, we can test large numbers of samples very quickly for particular tests. Here I have an ELISA plate which will test up to potentially 96 samples in each of its well. And we can place that in the ELISA reader and the test is automatically carried out and the results piped immediately to our laboratory information management system, a very rapid and effective way of getting our test results.
Of course, as with any laboratory of this type, not only have we got to be able to process the samples, we've got to be able to store them and incubate them and so we have here a large area within DERL where we have cooler facilities, cold storage facilities as well as areas in which we can incubate large numbers of samples.
Okay for many of you who have worked in the high security area at AAHL, you'll know that many of the laboratories are indeed quite small. And one of the big lessons that was learnt at the Pirbright Laboratories in responding to the foot and mouth outbreak, was the need for a large open space in which to carry out the response to such an outbreak. So when we designed DERL, we certainly intended to put that in place and you can see for yourselves the very open and airy nature of this laboratory. And in fact, it's an ideal type of environment in which to carry out that response work which is indeed very busy and this is an environment which we think best meets that type of requirement.
Okay, as we come to the completion of our tour of DERL I want to introduce you to two or three more entities that we built into this complex. For example, these two rooms here are very specialised rooms and uniquely built. They have the ability to reverse air pressure, either lower or higher than the rooms around them and, for example, if we want to work in here with some sophisticated molecular technology, it may well be that we want to higher air pressure in this room that would ensure that there was no contamination going into it but the air flow is always from this room into the rest of DERL. And indeed, some of the complex ducting that you saw earlier on in our tour is related to managing these air flow changes that we might want in this particular room.
As with the rest of AAHL, we place a very high priority on health and safety issues and for example here, you can see an eye wash and a shower facility within the DERL complex and there are many other features of health and safety that have been built into this new laboratory, for us a very important area.
As we move further down the corridor, you can see an auto-clave. This enables us to take contaminated material out of DERL and through into the rest of the high containment area of AAHL. The other side of those walls of course, is where we carry out most of our research activities which are absolutely crucial to underpinning the type of diagnostic technologies that we have available in this laboratory. And indeed, that relationship between the research and the diagnostic side is critical to AAHL in ensuring that we can deliver the right outcomes to Australia.
As we come down here we visit that area which we showed you earlier on in the DERL virtual tour where we have a number of additional computer workstations. Here we can not only input the sample data but we can also start to analyse the results and make sure that as quickly as possible we get these results into our laboratory information management system and back to our stakeholders who will be delivering these samples in the first place.
As I round this particular space, I can't help but notice that a few Geelong supporters seemed to have crept into the laboratory and perhaps we're looking at the premier winners this year or as Pies supporter I hope not.
Airlock exit
Okay as we complete the virtual tour of DERL, it's necessary for me to go out from this area here into the rest of the high containment area of the facility. To do so, I have to go through airlock and the first thing I have to do is release the air pressure on this door and go through this door, through the air lock and in through to the rest of AAHL.
Shower area
As I mentioned at the beginning of our virtual tour of DERL, we have the capability to operate this part of the facility in either outbreak mode or in routine mode. In outbreak mode, we will be particularly concerned that any of the pathogens that we're working with are held within the DERL facility. So we have the capability to keep the air pressure lower inside DERL, 50 pascals lower than the rest of the high containment laboratory. Similarly in outbreak mode, we would be insisting that staff shower out of this area of the facility before entering the rest of the high containment area. They would still equally need to take a second shower before leaving the high containment area. So we see here, we have a set of showers, male and female that we ask the staff in outbreak mode to shower out through. Of course in routine use, these showers would not be operational and staff would exit through the air lock.
The Australian Government provided funding through CSIRO and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to construct and equip the Diagnostic Emergency Response Laboratory.
For further information contact CSIRO Enquiries 1300 363 400.
