Veterinary Laboratories Agency
Virology Department
The Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) is an Executive Agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). It provides a specialist veterinary resource to the UK Government to help it fulfil its aims and objectives in veterinary public health and developing sustainable agriculture and food industries. The VLA has a large headquarters site near Weybridge in Surrey, where most of the research activities take place. The Weybridge site is a well-equipped facility with high bio-containment level L3+ facilities. In addition, there are 15 smaller Regional Laboratories, which provide a surveillance network throughout Great Britain. The principal mission of the VLA is to “safeguard public and animal health through world class veterinary research and surveillance of farmed livestock & wildlife”.
Five recent relevant publications:
- Brown I.H. (2005). Advances in molecular diagnostics for avian influenza. Proceedings of OIE/FAO International Conference on Avian Influenza, Paris, 7-8 April 2005. Developments in Biologicals 124, 93-98.
- World Health Organisation Global Influenza Program Surveillance Network; VLA authors, I.H.Brown, J.Banks & M.Slomka (2005). Evolution of H5N1 avian influenza viruses in Asia. Emerging Infectious Diseases 11 (10), 1515-1521
- Lau L-T., Banks J., Aherne R., Brown I.H., Dillon N, Collins R. A., Chan K-Y., Fung Y-W. W., Xing J., Yu A. C. H. (2004) Nucleic acid sequence-based amplification methods to detect avian influenza virus. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 313, 336-342
- L.P.Phipps, S.C.Essen, I.H.Brown (2004). Genetic subtyping of influenza A viruses using RT-PCR with a single set of primers based on conserved sequences within the HA2 coding region. J. Viro. Methods 122, 119-122
- Olsen, C.W, Brown, I.H., Easterday, B.C. & Van Reeth, K. (2006). Swine influenza. In: Diseases of Swine 9th edition. Edited by B.E.Straw, J.J.Zimmerman, S.D’Allaire & D.J.Taylor. Blackwell Publishing, Chapter 28 p469-482.
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