Institute Today

Institute of Veterinary Medicine (IVM) is a leading institution and structural subdivision of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine for Veterinary Biotechnology, which provides scientific support for the diagnostics, prevention and control of especially dangerous infectious diseases of farm animals.

The main mission of the IVM includes fundamental and applied research in the field of veterinary medicine, particularly focused on the diagnosis and prevention of infectious diseases of wild and domestic animals, hygiene and toxicology of food of animal origin and animal feed, environmental protection and the development of veterinary biologicals and diagnostic kits and their production techniques.

The IVM interests cover a wide range of areas including molecular studies and the monitoring studies of animal diseases, identifying threats for the population and their global distribution, namely:

  • study of the circulation of pathogens, development of methods for their detection, prevention, surveillance;
  • development of diagnostic, therapeutic and prophylactic veterinary drugs;
  • scientific support of the monitoring of animal health and development of regulations and guidelines, technologies and measures to ensure the sustainable veterinary well-being of the country.

There are 6 acting laboratories in the institute. They are:

  • Laboratory of Zoonotic Diseases and Risk Assessment;
  • Laboratory of Leptospirosis with museum of microorganisms named after Kucheriavenky;
  • Laboratoty of neuroinfections;
  • Laboratory of Anaerobic Infections named after V.P. Ryzhenko;
  • Laboratory of the Bacterial Animal Diseases;
  • Laboratory “Research Training Centre for Animal Disease Diagnostics” (BSL 2+).

The IVM laboratories work with pathogens of the diseases such as: classical and African swine fever, pseudorabies (Aujeszky disease), Teschen disease, PRRS, circovirus infection, mycoplasma infection of pigs, rabies, leptospirosis, anthrax and other soil infections, anaerobic diseases of farm animals, as well as carrying out studies concerning mycotoxicology.

The The BSL 2+ facility is a modern laboratory of biosafety level 2+ that was accredited in accordance with the requirements of ISO / IEC 17025: 2017. The laboratory is equipped with two amplifiers for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) QIAGEN Hilden Rotor-Gene 6000 Q (USA) and BioRad (Japan), a set of equipment for enzyme immunoassay (ELISA) BioRad (Japan), as well as a modern system for whole genome sequencing Ion Torrent S5 Termo Fisher Scientific to determine the characteristics of marker genes and analyze the genetic variability of pathogens.

The BSL 2+ includes the following areas of collaboration:

  • joint implementation of fundamental, applied researches, international grants, including the diseases diagnostics and sequencing of the genome of pathogens;
  • training of the PhD students, scientists, specialists of veterinary medicine using modern PCR and ELISA equipment, as well as advanced training of doctors of state laboratories of veterinary medicine of Ukraine in the field of veterinary virology and bacteriology in compliance with the requirements of biosafety, biosecurity and biorisk management.

There is a department carrying out the GIS analysis of monitoring data, prediction modelling and developing of preventive measures on infectious animal diseases using GIS approaches.

The IVM have experience of successfully completed international projects under financial support of DTRA (USA):

  • UP-2 Development of the Epidemiological Forecasting System for Zoonotic Diseases Employing GIS Technology, 2015–2016;
  • UP-4 Risk assessment of selected Especially Dangerous Pathogens potentially carried by migratory birds over Ukraine, 2017–2020;
  • UP-9 The spread of African swine fever virus (ASFV) in domestic pigs and wild boar in Ukraine – building capacity for insight into the transmission of ASFV through characterization of virus isolates by genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis, 2018–2020;
  • UP-10 Regional field-to-table risk assessment of the spread of African swine fever virus (ASFV) across Ukraine in wild fauna and via consumer trade routes – insight into the development of effective ASFV quarantine strategies and public policy, 2019–2020.

In 2020-2021 it was also successfully completed the project «Investigation of possible role of domestic animals as reservoir of SARS-CoV-2», funded by National research foundation of Ukraine.

Under abovementioned projects the IVM performed development of biosafety standard operating procedures on samples collection, shipment and preparation, testing, and sequencing, field efforts, PCR and ELISA studies, test kits development, samples sequencing using NGS, bioinformatics, spatial epidemiology.