UNL Researcher's Passion for Vaccines Helps in Fight Against African Swine Fever
Hiep Vu grew up on his family's swine farm in Vietnam. As he watched his parents gradually increase the size of their operation, he was struck by the positive results they obtained when they vaccinated their animals.
That fascination led Vu to earn a veterinarian degree in Vietnam, and a master's degree in veterinary science and a doctorate in integrative biomedical sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). His scientific interests have broadened today into the area of animal-focused immunology at UNL where he serves as an assistant professor of animal science, reports UNL.
Today he's leading a research project against African swine fever (ASF), a disease that currently has no commercially available vaccine. The federally funded project earned the support of a $770,000, three-year grant from the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. A key partner in the project is Scott McVey, professor and director of Nebraska’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and associate dean for the Nebraska/Iowa State University Professional Program in Veterinary Medicine.
"Though ASF has been studied for a century, development of an effective vaccine has long been stymied by a lack of complete information on key aspects of the disease. Creating a vaccine requires identifying the full set of viral proteins that stimulate the pig’s immune system to develop antibodies, for example. But due to the complexity of the virus, researchers so far have inventoried only a small number of those proteins," UNL reports.
The UNL team seeks to fill that knowledge gap by partnering with scientists at Vietnam National University of Agriculture, where ASF has impacted the Vietnam swine herd. This collaboration has allowed U.S. researchers access to many samples collected from pigs infected with the most virulent strain of ASF virus, the article said. The samples provide opportunities for researchers to study the pig's immune responses to the viral infection.
Vu said the project will identify viral proteins that are immunogenic, that trigger the pig's immune system to generate antibodies against ASF. This will allow researchers to compare among them to know which ones are relatively more immunogenic than the others, Vu noted in the article. Researchers hope this will allow them to see a complete picture of the pig's antibody profile against ASF infection and ultimately lead to improved diagnostic tools, as well as robust vaccine candidates.
Vu is also a faculty member with the Nebraska Center for Virology and an associate editor for the Journal of Medical Virology. For his extensive research into porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus, he received two patents connected to vaccine development.
More from Farm Journal's PORK:
Vietnam Leaders Optimistic About African Swine Fever Vaccine Progress
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