The Unit for Urgent Response to Biological Threats (CIBU) was created at the end of 2002 under the leadership of the Director General of Health (DGS) and the Director General of the Pasteur Institute, in order to respond to "specialized biological emergencies". These emergencies can be epidemics, accidents or the potential use of biological weapons, all of which endanger public health.
The program provides assistance across the following areas:
- Respond to microbiological emergencies 7/7 days and 24/24 hours;
- Have the scientific and technical capacities for the emergency detection and identification of infectious agents covered by public health plans, class 4 agents in connection with the National reference center of Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers and other infectious agents in support of National reference centers in the event of exceptional epidemics;
- Respond to the emergence of infectious agents through an operational capacity for the detection and identification of unknown agents and applied research to develop innovative techniques allowing the rapid identification of unknown agents;
- Is at the core of the french National Laboratory Network against Bioterrorism for human samples;
The Unit for Urgent Response to Biological Threats operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the detection and identification of a wide spectrum of pathogens, in particular on the following agents:
• Bacteria: agents of anthrax, plague, tularemia, melioidosis and glanders,…
• Virus: detection of class 4 agents Ebola, Marburg, Crimea-Congo, Lassa and Nipah without amplification of the infectious agent; detection of influenza viruses A (H5N1) and A (H7N9), coronaviruses of SARS and MERS, orthopoxviruses pathogenic for humans including smallpox and monkeypox viruses, ...
A wide range of other infectious agents can be detected and identified at CIBU.. First, second and third generation sequencing capacities are also available in the Unit. It enables to fully characterize the variants and for some pathogens their geographical origin.
See conditions to send a sample: https://www.pasteur.fr/fr/sante-publique/cibu/envoyer-un-echantillon
