Emerging infectious disease laboratory and diagnostic preparedness to accelerate vaccine development

Roberts, Christine C.

Efforts to prepare reagents, collect well-characterized samples, develop research materials, and international standards in advance for EIDs for whom alerts have already been raised, such as the WHO priority pathogens, through collaborative partnerships with governmental and philanthropic agencies along with academic and industry-based researchers will make us better suited to respond with speed to an outbreak. 24, 61, 69, 73 Assay standardization for these or any other newly emergent infectious disease will be challenging and take time to develop, collect and characterize quality reagents, to achieve sufficient sources samples for the establishment of serological or molecular standards. 10 The commitment of researchers and companies invested in the research, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of EIDs to participate and contribute to organized efforts to create and validate internationally recognized standardized reagents, assays and controls for priority pathogens in advance of an emergency is imperative and the time to start building this framework is now.