Brief general description of the facility
 CISA-INIA represents a modern and functional world-wide conception of a Biosafety Research Centre to work "in vitro" and "in vivo" in animal research on high risk and exotic infectious diseases of great economic impact, as well as for studies in environmental health. The Centre is located in Valdeolmos, 40 Km. north-east of Madrid. The property has 34 Has. and is surrounded by a 2 metres high double fence, with access controlled by closed-circuit TV and electromagnetic security barrier. The main building, of 13,000 m2, it is built in three floors: the upper floor dedicated to filter and pressure control services; the lower floor to warehouse, sterilisation and computerised control of the building; and the middle floor to laboratories, animal facilities and administration. Functional and structural design divides CISA in three different areas: biosafety, environmental health, and administration areas which are described below.
The High containment area covers 10,824 m2. Its access is totally restricted to trained personnel, authorised to work under high security conditions. This area is built with the most modern system of biological security including filtration of air with 72 absolute HEPA filters, low pressure controlled air system, 3 tanks of 40.000 m3 for thermal sterilisation, and one tank for chemical decontamination. Incineration of residues, pneumatic closing doors and other features, all of them controlled by a central computer twenty four hours a day. In this area we find the laboratories and animal facilities.
Laboratories: 26 laboratories and 14 common use rooms of Biosafety level 3 (BSL-3), including tissue culture rooms, imaging treatment, isotopes laboratory, photographic treatment, histology and pathology laboratories and electron microscopy. In addition, 2 laboratories of Biosafety level 3 plus (BSL-3+), fully equipped to work and store high risk exotic viruses that could affect humans.
 ii) Animal facilities: Animal facilities are composed of 21 individual, multispecies and polyvalent rooms with the capability to shelter fish, small andlarge animals suchas cattle and horses. The rooms include shower area and animal housing.
They are contained through three depression levels between them and the corridor, which allows to work withaerosol transmissibleagents, avoiding the risk ofspreading to other areas.
Environmental toxicology facilities cover an area of 923 m2 and are composed of three different areas: laboratories, animal facilities, and auxiliary areas. There are 10 laboratories of BSL-2 containment level equipped with the appropriate infrastructure for chemical analyses, "in vitro" experimentation, and toxicological bioassays.
RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
Europe without internal borders, and with an increased market globalisation, requires an increasing research on animal health, preferably directed to diagnosis and prevention of aggressive viral pathologies of high risk or exotic for Europe for which work in Biosafety conditions under high containment facilities are needed, and CISA is specially built to do this kind of work.
The Office International des Epizooties (OIE, World Organisation for Animal Health) listed as List A diseases, the transmissible diseases that have the potential for very serious and rapid spread, irrespective of national borders, that are of serious socio-economic or public health consequence and that are of major importance in the international trade of animals and animal products. An important part of the acitivities that CISA is currently doing are related to these animal diseases. The most important are summarised as follows:
Reference Center for the OIE, and Community Reference Laboratory for EU for African Swine Fever (ASF), Reference Center for the OIE for African Horse Sickness (AHS), and collaborator Center for Classical Swine Fever (CSF) and Foot and mouth Disease (FMD) for FAO: Main Activities include: diagnosis, production and distribution of serological and virological diagnostic kits and reagents, training courses for technical and research staff from many different countries, technology transfer, international missions and consulting for FAO, and participation in Research and Development projects related with these diseases.
CISA is also National Reference Laboratory for several OIE List A diseases. These activities include:
 Diagnosis of these exotic diseases related with sanitary alarms, evaluation of commercial diagnosis kits for CSF, production and distribution of ASF and Swine Vesicular Disease (SVD) biological reagents and diagnostic kits for national surveillance programmes, participation in the annual meetings of the Reference Laboratories of the EU and collaborative assay inter-laboratories studies.
Research and development of newly developed diagnostic methods currently focused to new antibody tests based on recombinant proteins of ASF, and new rapid PCR methodologies (conventional, multiplex and real time) for the early diagnosis of AHS, CSF, ASF, FMD, Bluetongue, Sheep and Goat pox, Camelpox and Orf virus, and molecular epidemiology. New research lines are beginning now in Rift Valley Fever and West Nile viruses concerning diagnosis.
Besides the research and work done in List A diseases, CISA is doing several projects in Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathies (BSE's) research, and CISA's facilities have incorporated several changes in order to work with these pathogens making this Centre a unique environment.
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