Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).CSIRO serves as Australia’s National Science Agency and partners with the research community, government and industry to “turn science into solutions”. Part of their core mission is in food security, health and wellbeing. CSIRO’s Agriculture and Food business unit had kindly donated a panel of sheep immune reagents to NEAH’s partner Pentland Immunologics.

International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya. ILRI is one of the core establishments conducting research on diseases of livestock, particularly ruminants. ILRI has a long history of research into the understanding of the immune response to various pathogens, including viral, bacterial and parasitic infections. The collection of monoclonal antibodies to molecules expressed by cells of the bovine immune system were generated and characterized in the 1980s and 90s. These have become critical reagents used by livestock vaccine researchers around the world. We have signed a material transfer agreement with ILRI allowing NEAH and Pentlands Immunologics to sell the ILRI MAb reagents. The cell lines are being kept at Green Mountain Antibodies and Pentlands Immunologics for redundancy.

The Moredun Group (Edinburgh, Scotland) was started by sheep farmers in 1920 as the Animal Diseases Research Association to address diseases affecting well being of sheep in Scotland. Known today as the Moredun Group, a registered charity in Scotland, the operation of the Moredun Research Institute (MRI) is at the heart of their work. MRI is a leading research center for ruminant infectious disease research and has developed multiple vaccines that have been commercialised. In recent years, the research portfolio has expanded to swine, poultry and aquaculture. Like ILRI, MRI has developed many reagents for analysing the immune response of ruminants and additionally swine.

Green Mountain Antibodies (GmAb), is located in the USA and is a recognized leader in the production of rat and mouse monoclonal antibodies. GmAb currently serves as a contract manufacturer for the production of mAbs to bovine immune proteons originally developed at the renowned International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, a world leader in livestock research. GmAb is also offering very competitive prices to enable researchers to test and evaluate these mAbs and provide useful feedback to NEAH to enable product improvement.

ImmunoTools, GmBh, is an international provider and manufacture of high quality immunological and cell biological reagents. The R&D-focus of ImmunoTools is the production of antibodies, production of recombinant proteins in E. coli, HEK, CHO, and COS cells, high-troughput-screening systems for the generation of functional antibodies by using automatic multi-colour-flow cytometric method, development of antibody arrays, and MELC (multi epitope ligand cartography) technologies.

Pentlands Immunologics (PI), a subsidiary of the Moredun Research Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a not-for-profit ‘sister’ organization that shares NEAH’s mission to ensuring a sustainable supply of validated immunological reagents to the veterinary research community. PI is designed in many ways to be a mirror of NEAH, providing redundancy in curation of the collection and maintaining product stocks. This partnership will also allow NEAH access to a world renowned ruminant vaccine research community with strong ties to vaccine research on neglected animal diseases in developing countries.