Selected proposals 2008-2009
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Generation of immune response markers to epizootic diseases to improve the immunological toolbox.
IC 5.5 , June 2008-June 2009
Identification of mechanisms and indicators of protective immune responses is an essential component of the effective development and testing of vaccines. The lack of reagents to study immune responses in farm animals hampers these studies. The aim of this project is to expand the toolbox of antibodies available to study immune responses in swine and cattle. These will be applied to the development and testing of vaccines against epizootic diseases. Antibody production will be commissioned and antibodies will then be tested by the core group of this project. Finally, the antibodies will be made available to different EPIZONE partners together with optimized protocols for their use. This will contribute to harmonization of research methods within EPIZONE, to studies on host immune responses and vaccine development. |
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Harmonisation of Wildlife Surveillance for Epizootic Animal Diseases
IC 6.5, March 2008-May 2009
Several viruses causing important animal diseases which are currently studied in EPIZONE institutes, have important wildlife reservoirs. Well known examples are Aujeszky’s disease virus (ADV) Classical swine fever virus (CSFV), Avian Influenza virus (AIV) and Rabies virus. Since wildlife may come in contact with domestic food producing animals, an increasing number of European countries are implementing wildlife surveillance programs for threatening viruses. The currently running programmes are often different between countries. For comparison of results, a harmonisation of these programmes (sampling strategies and sample numbers, diagnostic techniques, interpretation of results etc.) is urgently needed. This project will focus on harmonisation of wildlife surveillance programmes for CSFV and Rabies. |
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Epidemiology and surveillance of bluetongue virus serotype 8 in Europe
IC 6.6, June 2008-June 2009
The introduction of bluetongue virus (BTV) in northwest Europe in August 2006 has brought new perspectives to the dynamics of the virus and its vectors. A first exploratory analysis of outbreak data revealed the influence of separate single risk factors on the introduction and spread of the virus in host animals. This project aims to conduct a full multivariable epidemiological analysis of the spatio-temporal relationships between disease incidence and possible risk factors, which will take account of possible interactions and confounding factors. Such an analysis will enable to measure the true effect of risk factors corrected for the influence of others within a multivariable model. The identified risk factors will provide input to enhanced BTV risk modelling, which can form the basis for risk-based surveillance protocols. These protocols also need to address the monitoring of the efficacy of the vaccination programs that will be applied in the coming years to control the disease. EPIZONE provides the ideal environment to integrate different modelling approaches in the proposed analyses and to have the models validated by different experts in this network. The proposed approach represents a real challenge in obtaining the necessary data on virus, hosts and vectors from different sources and countries.
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EPIZONE Top 200 questions and answers database
IC 1.3, June 2008-June 2009
The aim of this project is to find in the Top 200 EPIZONE questions, FAQ EPIZONE, quick and easy answers to daily practical questions asked by members within all institutes. This is a great sample for a practical integrative approach, and can include non-research integration activities e.g. activities related to institutes’ facilities or resources, for example biosafety labs, high containment units and quality systems. The project describes the deployment by starting a project committee(or through a call for ‘faq-themes’ 20 themes are chosen for the FAQ top 200 database search system). Each EPIZONE institute gets the task to write down the top 10 questions with guiding answers on their tasked theme. |