October 29, 2013

 
USDA develops safer FMD vaccines
 

Without the need for virulent virus, USDA scientists have made a new patent-pending technology to safely produce foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccines.

FMD affects cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, swine, sheep and goats. The US has not had an outbreak of FMD since 1929, but the disease is still prevalent in other countries, can be debilitating in adult animals, and can cause death in young animals.

Microbiologist Elizabeth Rieder with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Foreign Animal Disease Research Unit, located at the Plum Island Animal Disease Centre at Orient Point, New York, designed a technique to make FMD vaccine without the need for virulent virus. She and her colleagues identified a virus DNA sequence that, if removed, makes the FMD virus harmless to animals, but still allows it to grow in cell culture.

This DNA sequence was used by the researchers to alter the FMD virus, which allowed them to learn more about how the virus functions. They studied how the virus amplifies itself, interacts with host animals, and inhibits the animal's defence mechanisms.

The technology was used in studies to produce a novel marker FMD vaccine that does not require virulent virus and instead uses an attenuated, or weakened, FMD virus that does not cause disease. It is safer than traditional vaccine production methods (chemical inactivation) that use naturally occurring FMD virus strains.

A private company is in the process of developing the ARS technology for vaccine production.

ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency, and this research supports the USDA priority of promoting international food security.