Technology

The CII is at the forefront of developing many of the tools for microbial discovery and diagnosis commonly used in detecting and controlling infectious diseases in humans, domestic animals, and wildlife. We have longstanding global partnerships on six continents with federal and international organizations as well as collaborations with foundations. Some of the significant technical advances our scientists have made include:

• First use of purely molecular methods (subtractive cloning) in pathogen discovery.
• First use of pan-microbial arrays in pathogen surveillance and discovery.
• First use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in pathogen discovery.
• Development of capture sequencing for viruses, bacteria, and agents of tick-borne disease. VirCapSeq was highlighted by Scientific American magazine as a "World Changing Idea" in 2015
• Molecular characterization of more than 2,000 microbes (and counting).
• Development of peptide arrays for serodiagnostics of infectious diseases.