Lab Matters Spring 2026 | Page 17

FEATURE

Demonstrating results— and telling the stories of the critical work done by public health laboratories— is a key component of the funding puzzle.

on sophisticated screening tools, so we don’ t have to test every food item with cumbersome, laborious and tedious methods,” he said.“ Our partnership with FDA has been critical. Most states, including Maryland, don’ t have the funding or infrastructure to throw money at a problem and build capacity at a moment’ s notice.”

As an example, Urban cites the use of high-resolution mass spectrometry techniques to identify what made a Maryland woman sick after she ingested Nut Diet Max brand Nuez de la India seeds— marketed as India nuts, commonly known as candlenuts— in 2023.

“ She ended up in the hospital with bradycardia,” Urban said.“ We tested the food and, like whole genome sequencing where you get the genetic fingerprint, we applied a chemical fingerprint. Through analysis, we learned these were yellow oleander seeds, which are highly toxic. High-resolution mass spectrometry is a relatively new technology for identifying unknowns.”

WGS is a critical tool in connecting the dots of foodborne illness, especially those that stretch beyond state or national borders.

“ All public health labs in the nation now use next-generation sequencing as their primary testing methodology for foodborne illness and disease surveillance on the clinical side,” said Kelly Oakeson, PhD, chief scientist, Next Generation Sequencing and Bioinformatics at the Utah Public Health Laboratory, noting that every laboratory has at least one next generation sequencer for surveillance work as part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ' s( CDC’ s) PulseNet.

“ That same foundation of technology, training and technique means that if I get a result here in Utah, I can directly compare that result to my neighbor’ s results in Idaho or New York or anywhere across the nation,” he said.

Through FDA’ s GenomeTrakr network, public health and university laboratories collect and share genomic data for foodborne and other pathogens that could affect the nation’ s food supply. With access to these data, public health officials compare and analyze pathogens in real time to enable rapid response.

No single technology has been as transformational in protecting the nation’ s food safety as WGS.

“ Access to genomic profiles of pathogens has been instrumental in solving outbreaks and protecting the public, especially in situations where there are few cases or where cases have occurred over a period of years,” said Prater.“ The ability to link and have confidence in the attribution to a particular outbreak or case has meant we can solve outbreaks we hadn’ t been able to before.”

Domestically, PulseNet has focused on validating protocols and decentralizing training of all laboratories on these protocols, according to Poates.“ That made it easy to make sure all laboratories are using the same methods to detect outbreaks using whole-genome sequencing and that results are seamless. That doesn’ t work on a global scale for many reasons,” she said.“ You have countries with vast differences in financial resources, human resources and capabilities. The important thing is to have methods that are validated so the results are reliable. That’ s the work we’ ve been doing recently with PulseNet International.”

Still, some variability isn’ t always a bad thing, Poates said.“ We’ re working on validating different full genome sequencing methods,” she says.“ Having the ability to use more than one technology provides flexibility for labs. Since some methods are more cost effective than others, we need this variability globally. But we want to make sure results are comparable so we can analyze them in a similar way for cluster detection and outbreaks.”

An Emerging Workforce

Investing in sophisticated technologies to test for foodborne pathogens also requires investing in a trained laboratory workforce. Poates said most international laboratories she has worked with now have a sequencer.

“ The difficulty is that they may not have the infrastructure to support data that comes off the instrument or the epidemiological experts to analyze and interpret data,” she says. PulseNet International trains international laboratories on sequencing instrumentation and on equipment that may have been purchased for respiratory virus surveillance that can also be leveraged for enteric surveillance.

Domestically, Oakeson has seen a workforce divide between bioinformatics experts and wet lab scientists.“ I think you can do both,” he said.“ That’ s a bridge we’ re trying to build on the workforce development side. It’ s our job to take wet lab scientists and train them on how to do bioinformatics. Now, we’ re adding the genomic epidemiology component too.”

Urban says the Public Health Laboratory Fellowship Program: an APHL-CDC Initiative has helped him meet emerging workforce needs in his laboratory.

“ I’ ve mentored 12 different fellows each for two-year appointments over the last three years,” he said.“ I have people at the bench who are amazing and love what they do. Seven out of the 70 scientists I have here are APHL fellows. The program is an excellent way to increase workforce when funding decreases and to bring new laboratorians into public health.”

Another benefit of developing a food safety workforce is that these laboratory