Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
Dec 9, 2019
Researchers at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) state they have created a vaccine that can deliver sterile immunity against African Swine Fever.
That was stated in an article, made available at Biorxiv, a preprint server for biology which contains articles which have not been certified by peer review. The website allows scientists to make their findings available immediately and receive feedback before submission to journals.
Previously uncharacterised virus gene
The essence of the American finding is that they discovered what they describe as “a previously uncharacterised virus gene” I177L, which when deleted completely attenuates the Georgia isolate. That isolate is an ASFv field isolate provided to the research team by the laboratory of the ministry of agriculture (LMA) in Tbilisi, Georgia.
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Conferring protection to ASFv even at low doses
The researchers wrote that currently there are no commercially available vaccines against ASF. The current vaccine candidate, however, “confers protection even at low doses (10[SUP]2[/SUP] HAD[SUB]50[/SUB]) and remains completely attenuated when inoculated at high doses (10[SUP]6[/SUP] HAD[SUB]50[/SUB]), demonstrating its potential as a safe vaccine candidate. At medium doses (10[SUP]4[/SUP] HAD[SUB]50[/SUB]) sterile immunity is achieved.”
They concluded: “Therefore, ASFv-G-ΔI177L is a novel efficacious experimental ASF vaccine protecting pigs from the epidemiologically relevant ASFv Georgia isolate.”
In a reaction on the website OneZero, one of the authors Douglas Gladue was quoted to be 'pretty excited'. He said: “I think it will be possible to commercialise the vaccine.”
Researchers at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) state they have created a vaccine that can deliver sterile immunity against African Swine Fever.
That was stated in an article, made available at Biorxiv, a preprint server for biology which contains articles which have not been certified by peer review. The website allows scientists to make their findings available immediately and receive feedback before submission to journals.
Previously uncharacterised virus gene
The essence of the American finding is that they discovered what they describe as “a previously uncharacterised virus gene” I177L, which when deleted completely attenuates the Georgia isolate. That isolate is an ASFv field isolate provided to the research team by the laboratory of the ministry of agriculture (LMA) in Tbilisi, Georgia.
(......................................)
Conferring protection to ASFv even at low doses
The researchers wrote that currently there are no commercially available vaccines against ASF. The current vaccine candidate, however, “confers protection even at low doses (10[SUP]2[/SUP] HAD[SUB]50[/SUB]) and remains completely attenuated when inoculated at high doses (10[SUP]6[/SUP] HAD[SUB]50[/SUB]), demonstrating its potential as a safe vaccine candidate. At medium doses (10[SUP]4[/SUP] HAD[SUB]50[/SUB]) sterile immunity is achieved.”
They concluded: “Therefore, ASFv-G-ΔI177L is a novel efficacious experimental ASF vaccine protecting pigs from the epidemiologically relevant ASFv Georgia isolate.”
In a reaction on the website OneZero, one of the authors Douglas Gladue was quoted to be 'pretty excited'. He said: “I think it will be possible to commercialise the vaccine.”