Much of this work is organised under the umbrella of the commercial programme at VLA with the aim of providing an efficient, profitable and high quality service to the commercial sector which complements VLA work for Government on livestock disease surveillance, veterinary research and the provision of laboratory services.

Within the programme, the Scientific Services Unit, formed in 1999 to deliver the Agency’s core commercial services, continued to supply the quality control testing of vaccines, residue and pharmacokinetic studies on antimicrobials and efficacy testing of antiparasitic compounds. The Unit is Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) compliant and ISO17025 accredited and therefore able to generate scientific data to the standards required by both commercial customers and the regulatory authorities. During the year, SSU completed 27 studies to a value of £1.3 million in support of companies’ marketing authorisations. A further 41 studies to a value of £1.1 million are ongoing.

Sealing ampoules containing samples for a quality assessment scheme

In the wider commercial programme, studies continued to reflect the wide range of services that VLA offers and commercial contracts to a value of £1.9 million were carried out across the Agency. In addition to the core services described above these included:

• vaccine development projects
  particularly important to enable VLA scientists to keep abreast of developments in this area
• risk assessments
  reflecting the need for companies to provide both scientific data and risk assessments in support of applications for marketing authorisations
• antibiotic sensitivity testing
  exploiting the unique resource of the ‘bead collection’ of isolates at VLA Bury St Edmunds
• quality assessment schemes
  provided by VLA Sutton Bonington QA Unit
• consultancies and expert reports
• a range of diagnostic tests
  for both UK and overseas customers of which the PETS Travel Scheme is managed as a purely commercial service
• a Library Subscription Service

Much of this work is now managed under cover of Framework Agreements (umbrella agreements under which Agency staff can conduct multiple studies), which have helped to develop closer business ties with our customers. We currently have Framework Agreements with nine major pharmaceutical companies and diagnostic manufacturers.

VLA stand at Sheep South West

VLA also recognises that Intellectual Property Rights are key business assets. During the year a further four patent applications were filed, all covering discoveries made in post-genomic studies on Mycobacterium bovis. However, proprietary know-how and patents are only assets when we can exploit them and again this year we extended our portfolio of Licensing Agreements with both diagnostic companies and vaccine manufacturers with three new licences.

Business Development
The Business Development Unit continued to provide biological reagent sales and a marketing service for the Agency.
Reagent sales increased again this year and for the first time exceeded £500k. The Unit continued to promote the whole Agency with the production of a wide range of marketing material including a leaflet on the Quality Assurance services, supporting exhibition stands at Sheep South West at Okehampton, Pig & Poultry Fair and The Royal Show at Stoneleigh and the design and production of posters for several meetings and seminars including an international conference on TSEs. Two customer newsletters were produced - one focussing on recent advances in VLA’s TSE and TB programmes and one featuring VLA’s contribution to assisting the UK animal health industry during the aftermath of the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic.