The
Veterinary Training Research Initiative (VTRI) - VT0105
The Cambridge Infectious Diseases Consortium
VT0105 led by DR JAMES WOOD - Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge
“Infectious diseases do not stand still.” For Professor Ian McConnell, the dynamic nature of animal disease is one of the great challenges facing 21st century veterinary science. When a new infection appears, he says, crucial questions need to be answered, quickly. What is it; where does it come from; who is at risk; will it spread, and where; how do we diagnose it, control it; and stop it? ‘Disease Dynamics’ is that science that will answer these questions
Finding all this out - finding out, as McConnell pithily puts it, “what would keep the Chief Veterinary Officer and the Minister awake at night” - will be the business of his VTRI project, the Cambridge Infectious Diseases Consortium.
The Consortium is a gathering of the talents, with a key role being taken by the Newmarket-based Animal Health Trust (AHT). The synergy of the project is reinforced by this relationship, as one key area of study will be equine flu - and where better to study that than in the capital of horse racing? Also under the spotlight, but with separate funding: the study of the dynamics of other bacterial and viral diseases of domestic animals, new and emergent pig diseases, and exotic diseases like African Horse Sickness. The exotic disease connection will link the consortium with international expertise in South Africa.
Just as the list of consortium members spreads wide - taking in government agencies and other Cambridge departments, as well as the Sanger Institute and the Institute for Animal Health, along with the AHT - so too does its multi-disciplinary approach. In searching out the dynamic interactions that allow a disease to establish itself and then spread, the Consortium will call on microbiology, virology, genomics, immunology, pathology, epidemiology and clinical research.
Multidisciplinary - and multi-source: the training scheme will see students, vets and researchers being sought at all levels to work with the Consortium, among undergraduates and postgraduates and from veterinary practises. Crucial too is its novel outreach scheme, which will include a roadshow, aimed at creating a two-way flow of information between scientists and practitioners. The aim is to seek out the curious and the enthusiastic, so that there’s an “oxygen of enthusiasm” running through the project - sharply focussed on delivering real answers to real problems.
“Infectious diseases do not stand still.” Neither will the Cambridge Infectious Diseases Consortium.
Information is also available on the University of Cambridge Veterinary Science website.
- First Annual Appraisal
(132 KB).
For more information, please contact the Programme Leader at jlnw2@cam.ac.uk.
Page last modified: 26 January, 2007