The University of Wyoming (UW) State Vet Lab has a biocontainment facility (BF), and within that there’s a necropsy facility. It was used recently for the first time to diagnose animal infections that have the potential to transfer to humans.
The BF has only just recently started being used for what it was meant for. Wyoming Public Radio’s Kamila Kudelska spoke with Dr. Elizabeth Case, the scientific director of the BF, on the delayed opening and then repurposing of the facility.
This transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Elizabeth Case: The facility was built and finished in 2013. But then when they turned on the air handling, there [were] infrastructure problems. And so we had to – before we could even use the new facility – we had to stop and fix those problems. So it wasn't until, like four years later, or even 2019, that the facility was actually officially finished and commissioned.
Kamila Kudelska: I understand that it's pretty significant that UW has one of these. So if you can describe why it's significant and what is the lab meant for?
EC: There are many institutions with biosafety level three laboratories. So these biosafety level three laboratories are required for work with infectious agents that can cause disease by the aerosol pathway. And so you need the specially engineered laboratories in order to enable safe work with those pathogens.
Our facility is capable of containing those pathogens and protecting the people in the laboratory, the people outside the laboratory, in our community and the environment as well from those pathogens. On top of that, we work with specific agents that are federally regulated. They're called select agents. This is a special privilege that's been granted to us by the CDC based on our security measures and training procedures and our containment measures. So we can have permission to work with these pathogens that are select agents.
Now, even more special is the fact that our biosafety level three laboratory is registered to work with Tier One agents. These are the agents that have the highest level for deliberate misuse and harm to humans and animals. They have weaponizing potential. So many biosafety level three labs are not permitted to work with select agents, and those that are permitted to work with select agents aren't necessarily able to work with Tier One agents. But our facility can work with any of those biosafety level three agents including tier one [and] select agents.
We also have a biosafety level three necropsy suite. So that enables the veterinary pathologist and technicians that work for the Wyoming State Veterinary laboratory to work on diagnostic cases that are potentially infected with these super dangerous pathogens in a safe and controlled manner. And that's also a unique feature of our biosafety level three laboratory.
KK: So a lot of the words that you're using, I think a lot of our listeners can kind of recognize them because of the pandemic. And it sounds like the lab just was functioning right before it started. So if you can talk a little bit about how the lab ended up being used during the pandemic?
EC: First, COVID-19 diagnostic samples do not need to be contained at a biosafety level three. They only require biosafety level two containment, but because of the size of the COVID-19 testing program that was spearheaded by Dr. Will Reed in our department, and also Dr. Brent Shoemaker. They really coordinated all of this. They needed a large laboratory space that was clean in order to set up an efficient workflow so they could process thousands of saliva samples for COVID-19 testing every day. The UW BF was not yet registered with the CDC for work with select agents, and there was no experimental research going on in the facility at that time. So we allowed the COVID-19 testing program to take place in that space. It was really perfect for that application. And they did a really good job of setting up a very streamlined and efficient and safe workflow in the laboratory. And it allowed us to kind of test out the features of the laboratory before we went primetime.
KK: What type of features?
EC: Well, we have multiple entries with air handling less progressively negatively pressurized. So we could monitor when those doors open and close, how the air pressure and air handling responds – just for example. Because if the negative pressurization of the rooms is reversed, that could result in the release of agents.
KK: So am I correct to assume that at the lab researchers or scientists are able to potentially look at something like COVID-19. That's the point of this lab?
EC: Right. So the real reason behind this lab being built was to serve the citizens of the state of Wyoming. Because we have many of these select agent pathogens endemic in wildlife and also domesticated farm animals in our state. So first and foremost, at the forefront of this lab, we are most concerned with the infectious agent Brucella abortus, which causes brucellosis. The state of Wyoming put a lot of effort and money into the control of this disease because it can be devastating to cattle producers. It causes spontaneous abortion. It's also a risk to human health, it can be transmitted to humans, and it can cause a disabling and chronic disease that's lifelong.
We also study plague [and]Yersinia pestis, which is endemic in prairie dogs. We've seen prairie dog die offs as a result of plague infections. Also, plague is a problem in mountain lions in the Greater Yellowstone region right now.
KK: And so once COVID-19, kind of tapered down and the testing program tapered down and we were decreasing that testing at UW, you said the lab kind of had prime time. So what has the lab been working on since then?
EC: So right now we have a brucellosis sequencing project going on. We are looking at wild isolates of Brucella abortus that have been isolated from elk. And we want to sequence their genomes and see if the strains that are circulating in elk are similar to the strains that we isolate from cattle or bison, for example, with the goal of seeing whether or not the pathogen has adapted to elk as a new host. And if it has genetic changes as a consequence of that.
KK: Anything else you'd want to add that we haven't mentioned yet?
EC: So I started to mention that when we built the lab. We were trying to expand capacity to respond to animal health outbreaks. So we're part of the National Animal Health Laboratory Network. And what this is [is] a network of Veterinary Diagnostic laboratories that gets activated in response to infectious diseases in animals. For instance, there was an avian influenza outbreak that started last year that was globally spread and the National Animal Health Laboratory Network activated our laboratory and participated in diagnosing avian influenza cases. And we worked closely with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in order to round up those cases and diagnose them. So the biosafety lab serves that network of animal labs. So in that way, the UW BF is part of a net nationwide effort to protect our biosecurity.
