Infections spread within pig herds can be catastrophic for farmers, causing deaths, decreasing productivity and promoting the rise of antimicrobial resistance. Diagnostics and vaccines are the best tools to combat infectious diseases. However, current porcine testing takes a week or more to complete and often focus on one pathogen at a time, preventing farmers and vets to quickly and accurately detect and deal with serious porcine infections. Consequences include slowing down appropriate treatment, prescribing antibiotic unnecessarily and risking broader herd contamination. To tackle this issue, we have put together large R&D partnership **IMPACT-Farm Alliance**: Imperial/Pilgrims/ProtonDx/Ceva/CIEL Taskforce for Farming Advancements in Health Technology to develop a simple and affordable tool for farmers to quickly identify infections affecting their pigs and inform their vaccine strategy. UK startup ProtonDx leads the partnership, which also includes academic institution Imperial College London (Faculty of Medicine and Dyson School of Design Engineering), the Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock (CIEL), global animal health company Ceva and world-leading pig producer Pilgrim's. Our solution, Lacewing, is capable of detecting the presence of pathogen and informing on vaccine strategy on farm in under 20 minutes, without needing a laboratory. We proved the feasibility of the approach in a previous InnovateUK programme. We will now turn this solution into a manufacturable prototype for use in farms, and validate it in 50 farms, paving the way to successful market introduction. Lacewing will transform the farming landscape in the UK and internationally by allowing to manage infections in pig herds, increasing productivity, avoiding shipping over long distances (towards net-zero emissions), decreasing the risk of antimicrobial resistance and supporting vaccine strategy.

Lung infections are responsible for substantial suffering, deaths, and economic loss in the UK and worldwide pig industry. Infections are caused by bacteria, viruses or a combination of the two. Control of lung infections is by the use of good farm practices (e.g., avoiding overcrowding), antibiotics and/or vaccines. However, antimicrobial resistance is a problem and there is a lack of effective vaccines for most pathogens, hence, pig lung infections are a substantial burden to the industry. For effective control, identifying the pathogens causing pig lung infections is crucial and dependent on diagnostic tests. However, current tests are slow - it can take many days to get the results back from the laboratory - and many tests are required, one for each bacterium or virus. At the request of extensive feedback from veterinarians, pork producers, farm managers, and policy makers, we have been developing a test that can rapidly and cheaply detect major bacterial and viral lung pathogens of pigs that can be used at the farm - a so-called a point of care test. The PorcinE Respiratory Pathogen-Identification (PERP-ID) device is designed to identify the five bacterial and three major viral lung pathogens of pigs, and is based on an electronic system developed by ProtonDx that can rapidly detect the presence of specific DNA molecules. Results can immediately be sent from the farm to local and/or global locations via a smart phone enabling fast remedial action at the farm, e.g., giving appropriate antibiotics. Initially, we will optimise PERP-ID with our collection of well characterised clinical samples, and then test it in the field with new samples by comparing its performance against currently used diagnostic tests. A successful field trial of PERP-ID will result in rapid and cheaper diagnosis of lung disease in pigs caused by bacteria and viruses, and result in a substantial reduction in suffering, death, antibiotic use, and economic losses in the UK and worldwide pig industry.