Resources

Facilities Available

The Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS) is housed in four multi-storied buildings with more than 250,000 square feet of available space and a staff of 450 people. The space is provided and owned by the Royal Thai Army. AFRIMS conducts research, serves as a regional reference lab, and conducts surveillance for potential emerging diseases at high-risk, endemic sites. AFRIMS is a BLS-II/III laboratory divided into three divisions in the Thai component and six departments in the US component. The laboratory has highly trained investigators many unique laboratory methods for the diagnosis of rickettsial diseases, malaria, dengue, diarrheal diseases, HIV, and flaviviruses. Laboratory staff looks for the emergence of new pathogen strains, and resistance patterns which pose threats to military and civilian personnel.

Global Emerging Infections System
This program is responsibility for initiating and supporting multiple complex disease surveillance projects with international military and civilian partners. It coordinates disease surveillance and outbreak responses across the AFRIMS research departments. The staff consists of 14-personnel including two public health physicians

Department of Virology
consists of 60 personnel (11 doctoral level) occupying 8000 sq ft of space in Bangkok and 7500 sq ft at field sites in Nepal and Northern Thailand. The department is actively engaged in pathogen specific research programs founded on solid laboratory diagnostics, field epidemiologic studies and progressing to vaccine development in both animal and large-scale human trails. The past successes include Hepatitis A Vaccine and Japanese Encephalitis Vaccine development. While current activities are on Hepatitis E vaccine and Dengue Vaccine development. Virology collaborates closely with WHO CC for Case Management of Dengue/DHF/DSS at Queen Sirikit Children’s Hospital. AFRIMS performs all dengue diagnostics work and clinical trials for dengue pathogenesis for this program since 1994.

Department of Immunology and Medicine
consists of 4 sections: research support, immunology, field studies and pharmacology/parasitology. They work in concert to perform a wide range of medical research. Drug resistant malaria studies, drug discovery and efficacy studies, diagnostic tests kit validation, vaccine development studies and fever studies are but just a few of the research items currently underway.

Department of Enteric Diseases
consists of 23 personnel occupying 6,000 sq ft of space. The department is divided into 4 science sections. (Microbiology, Epidemiology, Molecular biology/pathogenesis, Immunology) Current programs include investigations into antimicrobial resistance characterization, typhoid diagnostics, animal studies of campylobacter pathogenesis, national and regional diarrhea surveillance in collaboration with International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research-Bangladesh (ICDDR-B), Dhaka, Bangladesh and CIWEC Clinic, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Department of Entomology
AFRIMS conducts field and laboratory studies on malaria, dengue, scrub typhus and several other vector and rodent-borne diseases endemic in Southeast Asia. Field projects include epidemiological investigations, vector biology studies, insecticide resistance testing, and evaluation of novel tools to control vectors or prevent transmission. In the laboratory, studies are conducted to develop new rapid diagnostic methods, use molecular techniques to aid in insect identification, and utilize Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to chart epidemiological data and to assess the risk of vectorborne disease transmission.

The Department of Entomology maintains a variety of inhouse vector colonies. These include chiggers for scrub typhus research, anopheline mosquitoes for malaria research, and Aedes, Culex, and Toxorhynchites mosquitoes for viral transmission studies, insecticide resistance studies and repellent product testing. Several thousand anopheline mosquitoes are fed each week with gametocytemic blood obtained from malaria patients reporting to Thai Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) Malaria Clinics (under the auspices of a Human Use Protocol approved by the US Army and the Thai MOPH). Malaria sporozoites are produced to support vaccine challenge studies, drug testing models, and research on sporozoite invasion of hepatocytes.  A one of a kind scrub typhus infected chigger colony, AFRIMS scientists conduct scrub typhus vaccine efficacy studies and various studies on mite, pathogen, and reservoir interactions.

Department of Retrovirology
The laboratories accredited (with distinction) by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) perform clinical assays including immunophenotyping, HIV viral load assays, HIV serology, and cellular and humoral immunogenicity assays in support of prophylactic HIV vaccine trials.

Animal Facilities
AFRIMS Vet Med facility is over 60,000 square feet, AAALAC-accredited animal facility extensively renovated in 1999. A fulltime staff and over 30 various species of rodents and non-human primates available for support for research purposes.

Division of Research
consists of a Clinical Laboratory which performs Serology diagnosis for HIV-1 and Rickettsiae (Typhus group and Spotted Fever Group) Tissue culture diagnosis of Herpes viruses and Chlamydia PBMC Phenotyping and a Research Laboratory which does Molecular identification and characterization of HIV-1 and Rickettsiae Isolation of Rickettsia from clinical specimens and arthropods.

Division of Analysis
conducts the research and laboratory support in the field of health promotion, screening and confirmation of drug abuse, environmental toxicology. The division is equipped with chemistry analyzer, hematology analyzer, AA, GC, HPLC and GC-MS

Support Services
The institute has an administrative department and a logistics department. The administrative support section comprised of 50 personnel. There are six sections in administrative support; budget, photo shop, audiovisual, personnel section (assist with passport and visa matters), computer section, Thai language instruction, medical research library (the largest in SE Asia). The logistics department is comprised of 34 personnel who support procurement and contract requirements for research activities as well as maintaining a motor pool with more than 20 4-wheel drive Toyota land cruisers and drivers. The medical maintenance assures all medical research equipment is up and running. The Occupational and Safety personnel assure that laboratory and support staff is working in approved and safety working situations and that all recommended precautions are followed to prevent illness and injury. Important collaborations enable the administrative department to facilitate the travel document preparation for necessary for activities outside of Thailand. The logistics department negotiates and maintains contracts with outside vendors to provide materials and services necessary to conduct research in compliance with regulations of both Thailand and the United States. Computers- more than 300-networked desktop PC’s are available for use throughout the Institute. From the LAN email and Internet capabilities are seamlessly integrated.

Major Equipment:
Approved Hot Lab for working with radioactive isotopes
Surgical suite for animal research BSL 2+
Flow cytometer Molecular Diagnostics:
Gel Doc (Syngene), Photodyne Gel Documentation, BIORAD Chef DR III System, DNA Sequencer ABI 310, Real Time PCR (Model ABI 7700, ABI 7000), Protein Isoelectric Focusing System (Two Dimensional Gel Electrophoresis), Four Column Oligonucleotide Synthesizer, FPLC System for Macromolecule purification, DNA Thermal Cycler