In France, INPREST (French acronym for enclosed national facility for communicable spongiform encephalopathy research) is a unique enclosed animal house for the study of prion diseases and emerging diseases, which was inaugurated last July. The 4,120 square-meter building compliant with confinement standards was designed to conduct research on small and large animals, in conditions fostering long-term production and follow-up. The animal house can accommodate 128 sheep and 24 bovines in high security conditions. In the multifunctional building, researchers will be able to study livestock infections, including emerging diseases such as avian influenza and sheep bluetongue disease.
The facility completes the Experimental Platform on Infectious Disease (PFIE), Animal Health Division, INRA Center (Tours), which is part of INRA's Infectious Animal Disease Experimental Institute and of an national RIO/IBISA system. The 11.2 million-euro facility will be open to all national research and higher education teams partnered with INRA (AFSSA, CEA, CNRS, INSERM, Pasteur Institute, Schools of Veterinarian Medicine, etc.). The enclosed animal house, which is unique in France, is also part of a set of research facilities in the Centre Region and belongs to NADIR, the European network of infectious disease platforms working on infectious animal diseases.
The contained structure rounds off INRA's national experimental facilities and provides the capacity to conduct experiments for studying the physiopathology of infectious processes and immune response to infections, carry out vaccine and therapeutic trials, and assess diagnostic methods.
