Theme 5 “Intervention Strategies”
Theme leaders: Dr Linda Dixon, Institute for Animal Health, United Kingdom and
Dr Marie-Frédérique Le Potier, Agence Française de Securité Sanitaire des Aliments, France.
EPIZONE integrates research throughout Europe aimed at effective control of epizootic diseases by use of intervention strategies. The goal is to improve the efficacy of vaccination regimes and optimize vaccine strategies. The focus is on the OIE list A diseases: African swine fever, classical swine fever, foot-and-mouth disease, bluetongue, Rift Valley fever and avian influenza
Work Package 5.1: Vaccine technologies
Work Package 5.2: Host responses to infection
Work Package 5.3: Adjuvants
Work Package 5.4: Antivirals
Internal Call 5.5: Improved Immunology Toolbox
What is going on in the EPIZONE network in the field of Intervention Strategies.
· A review article on “Antigen delivery systems for veterinary vaccines” has been written and is now available online: “ Antigen delivery systems for veterinary vaccine development I. Viral-vector based delivery systems”. Brun et all. (1) (WP 5.1)
· The ASFV group has organized two joint vaccine experiments using funding from other projects and including expertise from different partners. The first includes an experiment to test the ability of attenuated ASFV vaccine strains to provide cross-protection against isolates from the same and different genotypes. In the other experiment different antigen delivery and prime boost strategies were studied
· A review of DIVA vaccination strategies has been prepared together with WP 4.3. The development of an effective vaccination regime requires the parallel development of DIVA diagnostics which are essential in eradication campaigns to distinguish between infected and vaccinated animals. Contacts have been made with external organizations and with companies involved in vaccine development.
· Discussion groups have been developed on bluetongue disease, African swine fever virus, Paramyxovirus vaccines, Rift Valley fever virus vaccines and DIVA vaccines.
· The rapid deployment of antivirals has the potential to limit the spread of infection by reducing replication of virus before the induction of immunity following vaccination. If the antiviral is particularly effective this can be an effective control measure alone. Antivirals are widely used to control human infections, as yet they have not been used to control epizootic infections in farm animals.
· Two antiviral agents were selected for in vivo evaluation. Initial in vivo experiments have been successfully carried out with i) a small molecule “BPIP” against CSFV in a joint experiment and ii) single domain Llama antibodies against FMDV. Results of these animal experiments resulted in the publication of a peer-reviewed paper, Harmsen et al (2) and oral presentations in two congress (IPVS-Durban, June 2008 and Pestivirus-ESVV-Uppsala, September 2008 )
Publications
WP 5.1
Rodolphe Gravier, Daniel Dory, Michel Laurentie , Stéphanie Bougeard, Roland Cariolet, André Jestin (2007), In vivo tissue distribution and kinetics of a pseudorabies virus plasmid DNA vaccine after intramuscular injection in swine. Vaccine 25, 6930–6938.
1): Brun A, Albina E, Barret T, Chapman DA, Czub M, Dixon LK, Keil GM, Klonjkowski B, Le Potier MF, Ortego J, Richardson J, Takamatsu HH. Antigen delivery systems for veterinary vaccine development I. Viral-vector based delivery systems. Vaccine. 2008 Oct 3.
WP 5.3
Vahlenkamp, T.W., T.C. Harder, M. Giese, F. Lin, J.P. Teifke, R. Klopfleisch, R. Hoffmann, I. Tarpey, M. Beer, and T.C. Mettenleiter (2008): Protection of cats against lethal influenza H5N1 challenge infection. J. Gen. Virol. 89, 968-974.
Giese, M., T.C. Harder, J. Teifke, R. Klopfleisch, A. Breithaupt, T. Mettenleiter, and T.W. Vahlenkamp (2008): Experimental infection and natural contact exposure of dogs with H5N1 avian influenza virus. Emerging Infectious Disease, 14, 308-310.
WP 5.4
Goris N, Vandenbussche F, De Clercq K. (2008). Potential of antiviral therapy and prophylaxis for controlling RNA viral infections of livestock. Antiviral Research, 78, 170-178.
2):Harmsen MM, Fijten HP, Dekker A, Eblé PL.(2008) Passive immunization of pigs with bispecific llama single-domain antibody fragments against foot-and-mouth disease and porcine immunoglobulin. Vet.Microbiol.,doi:10.1016/j.vetmic.2008.04.030.
Keita, D., Servan de Almeida, R., Libeau, G. & Albina, E. (2008). Identification and mapping of a region on the mRNA of Morbillivirus nucleoprotein susceptible to RNA interference. Antiviral Research, 79, 37-48.