The Istituto G. Caporale produces diagnostic, treatment and prophylactic products for use in the diagnosis of pathologies in the veterinary field.

These are essential tools for carrying out treatment plans and for improving livestock production.

The diagnostics produced by the Institute are sold to public and private laboratories, through particular commercial channels.

The diagnostics are divided into:

• culture mediums: solid or liquid solutions which contain nutritive substances on which cells can be grown;
• diagnostic kits: complete packs containing the antigens, serums and reagents for use in performing a laboratory diagnosis;
• in vivo diagnostics (allergens): products extracted from micro-organisms which when inoculated into animals cause an inflammatory local reaction, discriminating by yielding a positive or negative test result;
• in vitro diagnostics: products extracted from micro-organisms used as reagents in laboratory tests, discriminating by yielding a positive or negative test result.

The Institute also produces vaccines on behalf of the Ministry of Health against the principal animal pathologies such as Bluetongue and Brucellosis. It also produces autovaccines, or autogenous vaccines, on behalf of private individuals, for example freelance veterinarians.

The vaccines are prepared with material consisting of micro-organisms, or part of them, suitably treated so as to make them lose their infective but not their antigenic properties.

The vaccines are inoculated into animals in order to stimulate the production of antibodies capable of neutralizing the micro-organism itself.

A vaccine derived from a micro-organism taken from the animal into which it will later be inoculated is called an autovaccine; we talk of a "herd" vaccine when this procedure is practised on the animals of an entire herd.