DTRA, Sandia collaborating on new mosquito surveillance program

The United States Army announced a collaboration on Monday between two agencies to combine their efforts to develop new vector surveillance methodologies to detect emerging infections in local mosquito populations and to develop a near real-time recording system to combat such threats.

The two agencies, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and Sandia National Laboratories, hope their research will provide warfighters with more information on mosquito-borne diseases in areas of deployment, allowing for future vector control. The system will be autonomous for one month and will wirelessly upload results to the Biosurveillance Ecosystem (BSVE), a cloud-based application that allows users to identify and respond to public health concerns.

The system will run a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) to test for multiple viruses at once. LAMP is an amplification process similar to polymerase chain reaction, but differs by performing the reaction at a constant temperature instead of testing at different temperatures. The process allows for lower power requirements for the instrument.

The process is being used to develop evaluations for the West Nile, St. Louis Encephalitis and Western Equine Encephalitis viruses. Box development should be completed by the summer with field testing beginning in mid-to-late summer in Southern California.