Gates Foundation grants Pirbright Institute £2.1 million to investigate cattle antibody responses to virus-like particles vaccines.

August 29, 2018

2 Min Read
Further development of low-cost FMD vaccine funded
Source: The Pirbright Institute.

The Pirbright Institute has a received a £2.1 million grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to conduct research on a novel foot and mouth disease (FMD) vaccine.

According to the announcement, Pirbright Institute scientists will investigate the cattle antibody responses triggered by the vaccine, which will help improve its protective properties. The team will also develop lab-based methods of testing whether the vaccine is effective so they can reduce the number of animal studies.

The new vaccine is composed of virus-like particles (VLPs) that are effectively modified outer shells of the FMD virus that contain no genetic material. Ground-breaking research carried out by Pirbright scientists and their collaborators has already demonstrated that the VLPs are able to protect against four different types of the disease.

The Gates Foundation-funded research, led by professor John Hammond, will look at the cattle antibody response against the vaccine, which will enable scientists to develop the second generation of VLPs, the institute said.

“Using this funding, we will explore the cattle antibody response during vaccination in molecular detail. This will enable us to pinpoint the regions on the surface of FMD virus that cattle antibodies recognize to control infection. We can then engineer VLPs to contain more of these antibody sites that are shared between the different types of FMD virus to increase the breadth of protection after vaccination,” Hammond said.

The researchers will also develop methods that allow the effectiveness of the vaccine to be established in the lab rather than using current methods that are reliant on studying the immune response to VLPs in animals. This will allow the effective, fast and reliable monitoring of the vaccine when it goes into commercial production, according to the announcement, and will help scientists fulfill their commitment to the 3Rs: refinement, reduction and replacement of animals in research.

Existing commercial vaccines are produced by growing live infectious virus, but the VLP vaccine is propagated in insect cells, making VLPs much safer to produce and removing the requirement for high-containment facilities, Pirbright said. The VLPs have also been engineered to be more stable, making the vaccine much easier to store and reducing the need for constant refrigeration.

This research will complement studies recently funded by the Wellcome Trust to make the manufacture of the VLP vaccine a practical reality and to ensure that it is commercially viable. The provision of an effective, low-cost vaccine will help address the massive shortfall in the availability of FMD vaccines, particularly in Africa, where the disease has a huge impact on national and international trade, food security and the health of both humans and animals.

Subscribe to Our Newsletters
Feedstuffs is the news source for animal agriculture

You May Also Like