Innate Immunity, Infection and Inflammation

Many of the important infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonoses and with the emergence of antibiotic resistance, there is a renewed interest in predictive animal models of experimental infection.

Many such models exist as natural infections in companion animals and livestock, where they are of substantial economic importance.

Partners at the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) and the Scottish Rural University College (formerly SAC) are the major centres for veterinary surveillance in Scotland and are located at the Easter Bush campus.

Increasingly, molecular tools are being used to identify new pathogens, to monitor pathogen evolution and to understand host restriction, species jumps and infectious disease pathology.

The Roslin Institute has a substantial programme of research directed towards understanding the pathogenesis of infectious disease, identifying disease resistance and developing vaccines.

Included within this programme are disease models in mice, rats, pigs, sheep and chickens. A key response to infectious agents is inflammation which, in its chronic form, underlies many major human morbidities.

Chronic inflammatory disease also occurs in companion animals and many experimental animal models are studied within the Roslin Institute, the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies and the MRC Centre for Inflammation Research. The Centre for Comparative Pathology provides a focus for research in Molecular Pathogenesis of Infectious and Inflammatory Disease in its broadest sense.