Sandra Sapats and Gaylene Gould in lab

New tools to detect poultry disease

Diagnostic tests for infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV), one of the most economically important diseases in the intensive poultry industry, will help keep the disease out of Australia and assist in containing outbreaks, should they occur.

• 18 April 2006 | Updated 14 October 2011

• What CSIRO did
• Recombinant antibodies
• Real-time polymerase chain reaction 
• About our researchers
• More research

CSIRO researchers have developed new tools for diagnosis of Infectious Bursal Disease Virus (IBDV), a deadly pathogen of chickens.

What CSIRO did

CSIRO developed two different, but complimentary, diagnostic tools to quickly detect IBDV and allow differentiation between the virus strains.

IBDV is the causative agent of one of the most economically important diseases in the intensive poultry industry. 

Milder strains of the virus, which do not cause poultry deaths, are present in Australia. However, the highly deadly, or 'very virulent', strains occur in all poultry-producing countries except:

• Australia
• New Zealand
• United States
• Canada.

Very virulent IBDV can cause mortalities in 20-70 per cent of infected poultry flocks.

Recombinant antibodies

Recombinant antibodies against IBDV were developed after four years of research. This allowed researchers to test if:

• the disease agent was present in samples
• the IBDV is the very virulent strain.
  “An incursion of very virulent IBDV strains into Australia could cause devastating losses to the poultry industry.”

  CSIRO’s Dr Sandra Sapats

The reagents are one of the first recombinant chicken antibodies ever created, and as such represent a very useful application of cutting edge science.

CSIRO has filed a provisional patent application for the recombinant antibodies (International patent application PCT/AU02/00729), and is seeking expression of interest from potential commercial partners.

Real-time polymerase chain reaction

The team developed highly sensitive diagnostic tests for the rapid detection of very virulent IBDV of chickens and the differentiation of very virulent IBDV from less virulent classical and variant IBDV strains.

In the real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay, the intrinsic specificity of the probe(s) allows the differentiation between very virulent and classical strains of IBDV without the need for sequencing.

The design of primers and probes is based on the analysis of more than 100 geographically and pathogenically diverse serotype 1 IBDV strains.

The duration of the assay from RNA extraction to analysis of results is less than five hours, far shorter than current molecular diagnostic tests. The specificity of the test has been evaluated with a range of different strains.

About our researchers

The researchers involved in this project were:

• Dr Sandra Sapats
• Dr Hans Heine
• Mr Adam Foord 
• Ms Lee Trinidad
• Ms Gaylene Gould.

More research

CSIRO is working to create further recombinant antibodies and peptide-based reagents for innovative diagnostic and treatment applications.

Further projects are exploring the use of recombinant antibodies to foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) for the development of a test to differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals.

Real-time PCR is being used as a diagnostic tool to characterise a range of other viruses, including Newcastle disease and avian influenza, particularly the highly pathogenic H5N1 strains.

Find out more about research by CSIRO Livestock Industries.