Australian and U.S. Scientists Team Up on New African Swine Fever Vaccine
Australian researchers at CSIRO Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) announced they are teaming up with U.S. company MBF Therapeutics to evaluate its DNA vaccine candidate. As Australia's national science agency, CSIRO said its committed to solving the greatest challenges through innovative science and technology.
MBF Therapeutics will provide ACDP with an ASF vaccine candidate produced via their T-Max platform, David Williams, an ASF expert at ACDP, said in a CSIRO article. ACDP will then investigate exactly how the pig immune system reacts to the candidate vaccines.
The T-Max platform is based on technology adapted from immunotherapeutic treatment of human cancer and aims to eliminate pathogens as they enter the body. David explained in the article that this protects the animal from infection and prevents disease transmission between animals.
The vaccine candidates produced using this platform target T-cells response in the immune system. T-cells are one of the important types of white blood cells of the immune system and play a central role in the adaptive immune response, the article said.
“For Australia to continue trading, we must be able to provide evidence that we remain free from the virus," David said in the article. "If there were an outbreak of ASF virus here, there would likely be an immediate stop to pork exports. We would implement measures to control the outbreak with the aim of eradicating the virus. To reestablish trading rights, we must again prove we are free of the disease.”
David explained that one of the advantages of the T-Max platform is that it can be designed to include markers that allow them to distinguish between vaccinated pigs and those that have been naturally infected.
Currently Australia and the U.S. are both free of ASF. ASF, a deadly disease of swine, is highly transmissible among both domestic and feral swine. David pointed out that one of the biggest challenges the global pork industry faces right now is to develop a safe and effective vaccine against all ASF virus strains that can be produced economically, at scale, and can be readily adopted by pig producers.
