Hosted by the Laboratory for Food Safety, the National Platform for the Identification and Typing of Pathogens (IdentyPath) aims to provide methodological support to all of ANSES’s laboratories and contribute to the pooling and development of high- and medium-throughput molecular tools and approaches.

This platform’s missions are to:

• monitor technological developments concerning innovative approaches for the complete and rapid molecular detection, quantification, identification and characterisation of infectious agents;
• provide scientific and technical support under partnerships between teams implementing ANSES’s laboratory projects to develop and validate new, more effective molecular detection and typing methods;
• provide ANSES’s laboratories with access to high-throughput technologies through partnerships;
• perform high-throughput PCR and next-generation sequencing (NGS) analyses to detect and characterise microbial agents, in particular highly pathogenic micro-organisms and toxins (biological warfare agents listed in Article L.5139-1 of the French Public Health Code) and foot-and-mouth disease virus;
• participate in the annual exercises organised by the General Secretariat for Defence and National Security as part of the Biotox plan, the bioterrorism component of the Vigipirate plan, by sequencing the isolated strains of highly pathogenic micro-organisms and toxins.