Contacts

The team at Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Piemonte, Liguria e Valle d’Aosta (IZSPLV), Torino and the team at Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) Roma are in charge of the EURL TSEs activities. They have a long experience of collaboration on TSEs (BSE, scrapie, Chronic Wasting Disease) and they have been partners in many research projects. They have extensive experiences in the diagnosis of all animal prion diseases, even in emergency situation and are fully aware of the roles and duties they have to fulfil for the national and European authorities. They conduct their activities in accordance with and under quality assurance and are accredited according to the EN ISO/IEC 17025 standard. They comply strictly with all the International, European and National regulations and legislations regarding Biosafety, Biosecurity, Health and Safety and Animal Welfare

IZSPLV Team

IZSPLV is a health governmental body founded in 1912. Its tasks are to guarantee consumer’s health by protecting animal population health and welfare and by improving and controlling food and feed production, thus enhancing their safety levels. 

Our team in Torino is part of the Italian Reference Laboratory for Animal Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs) – CEA – that was established in 1991 by the Italian Ministry of Health. Settled in Torino headquarters, our team has gained experience in providing scientific advice and expertise of excellence and scientific technical support to the Ministry of Health and other ministerial or regional bodies on all the main issues relating the TSEs. It aims at developing, demonstrating and disseminating models of excellence in the field of diagnostic, epidemiological and risk assessment methods applied to the study of TSEs;  it carries out scientific research in the diagnostic and epidemiological fields; it has a long experience in coordinating the activities of local laboratories and monitors their diagnostic performances; it designs and provides programmes of continuing education for all staff involved in the surveillance of TSEs; it collects and analyses data to monitor and characterize the risks linked to TSEs and to provide a sound basis for decision-making; it is involved in the risk communication regarding TSEs with the full involvement of all stakeholders; in the past it has acted in close cooperation with the former European Community Reference Laboratory (CRL) for TSEs and with other EU National references centres.Within the EURL, The IZSPLV team is in charge in particular of the direction and general coordination of the EURL, of rapid testing and confirmatory testing, of coordinating all activities related to batch testing and, finally, of any issues related to risk assessment and epidemiology.

ISS Team

ISS is the National Public Health Institute in Italy. It employs about 2,500 staff personnel, including more than 600 scientists, in 6 Departments and 16 Centres. The mission of ISS is to promote and perform research in all fields of public health, with special emphasis on infectious diseases, cancer, environment, biomedical engineering, toxicology, pharmacology and veterinary public health. 

Since 2004, the ISS team is responsible for conducting strain typing activities in the whole field of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, acting as the Reference for the Italian Authorities at Community level for all matters concerning molecular testing related to TSE including all the issues in connection with the activities of Community reference laboratory. Moreover, since 2006, ISS is fully responsible at the national level for what concerns genetics in the whole field of TSE being the Reference for Italian Authorities at the Community for all matters concerning molecular and biological strain typing as well as for genetics of animal TSE. ISS provides the Italian Ministry of Health and other ministerial or regional bodies with scientific advice and technical support on all the main issues relate to TSE.Within the EURL, The ISS team is in charge in particular of issues related to discriminatory testing, bioassay and strain typing, and genotyping.