In response to African swine fever’s (ASF) spread from its origins in sub-Saharan Africa to other continents, scientists at the USDA and the University of Connecticut (UConn) have developed vaccine candidates deemed “promising” by independent researchers. The vaccine candidate ASFV-G-ΔMGF was one of those candidates and was recently licensed for commercial development by Zoetis, an offshoot of the medical company Pfizer and the world’s largest animal pharmaceutical producer, reports UConn Today.
UConn’s Technology Commercialization Services (TCS) worked with USDA to facilitate an agreement allowing USDA to negotiate licenses with animal health companies like Zoetis who can eventually bring this vaccine to the market.
According to UConn today, Guillermo Risatti, professor of pathobiology in UConn’s College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources and director of the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory (CVMDL), is enthusiastic about the vaccine candidate’s potential.
“Over the years, people have tried live attenuated vaccines, they have tried killed vaccines, they have tried different cocktails of proteins that are expressed by the virus as a mechanism of protection,” Risatti said in the article. “But it never materialized into some sort of candidate.”
Along with USDA scientists Manuel Borca and Douglas Gladue, Risatti helped develop this vaccine candidate.
“The successful development of safe and effective modified live vaccines represents a new frontier in protecting swine from ASF,” the article said.
Researchers from Zoetis and the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI) in Germany have conducted trials on wild boars using edible bait containing the vaccine, and on domestic pigs through a more traditional route—injection into the muscle, successfully demonstrating the immunization’s efficacy against ASF in both.
“Overall, our findings confirm that ‘ASF-G-ΔMGF’ is a most promising vaccine candidate that could find its way into well-organized and controlled immunization campaigns,” the researchers from Zoetis and FLI write in a peer-reviewed article in Pathogens. “Further research is needed to characterize safety aspects and define possible improvements of oral efficiency.”
Like all viruses, ASF mutates and persists, the article explained. This makes it challenging to control the spread of the disease, especially when animals are constantly being moved to market or formally or informally from one neighbor to another, Risatti said in the article.
