Digitally colorized transmission electron microscopic image of avian influenza A (H5N1) virus particles (in gold), grown in Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) epithelial cells (in green). (Courtesy of ARUP Laboratories)
A Utah research laboratory may play a key role in advancing bird flu testing amid an outbreak in commercial and backyard poultry flocks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention selected ARUP Laboratories, a University of Utah and its Department of Pathology enterprise, as a formal partner to develop a test for avian influenza, also known as bird flu.
In addition to ARUP, the CDC partnered with other four labs — Quest Diagnostics, Labcorp, Aegis Sciences and Ginkgo Bioworks, according to a news release.
It’s a shift for the CDC, the news release reads, as it enables commercial labs to work on testing development with the agency to make it available quickly if needed.
Federal officials say no sign bird flu is spreading among humans, despite Missouri case
“ARUP wants to be a fully integrated partner in the delivery of public health services and clinical laboratory testing, and this contract opens doors for both,” Marc Couturier, head of clinical operations for Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at ARUP said in the release.
The announcement comes after a bird flu case in Missouri, the 14th human case in the country in 2024. The patient who contracted the flu didn’t have any known contact with infected animals and public health officials said on Thursday that there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission in the area.
There are limitations to doing high-volume testing, Benjamin Bradley, medical director of an ARUP infectious disease technologies research department said in an August release. The new testing would provide much higher volume testing and quicker turns, he said.
“Bird flu may not be an issue now, but five or even 10 years down the road, we can take this test and look at how the virus has changed during that time and modify our assay accordingly in a shorter amount of time,” Bradley said.
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