Improvement of current and development of new vaccines for theileriosis and babesios of small ruminants

Objective

The proposal deals with the establishment of control measures for two major tick-borne diseases of small ruminants: theileriosis caused by Theileria lestoquardi and T. uilenbergi and babesiosis caused by Babesia ovis. The research programme aims at improving existing and producing new attenuated vaccines, designing subunit vaccines and capability building. To achieve these goals the proposal will assess parasite diversity and identify molecules associated with attenuation of parasite virulence to be included in the development of safe and efficacious live vaccines. For the design of a subunit vaccine parasite molecules will be identified and characterized involved in i) invasion of host cells ii) activation of CD4+ T cells and NK cells for the production of cytokines capable of activating macrophages for killing of the parasites and iii) activation of cytotoxic T-lymphocytes involved in killing of T. lestoquardi-infected leucocytes. For improvement of attenuated vaccines, a combination of vaccine with subunit vaccine will be examined for synergistic effects and reducing the need of a cold chain by improving storage conditions/ shelf life of vaccine will be aimed for. Groups working on Plasmodium are involved with the goal to benefit from the scientific and technological knowledge in this field and to translate it into tools and reagents for small ruminant piroplasms. Industrial expertise regarding vaccine development and delivery systems will be incorporated in the whole project. The impact of the vaccine to be produced against these emerging tick-borne diseases will be enormous, as they pose a great threat to livestock production, and a contribution will be made that will meet critical Millennium development goals: food security, food safety, poverty alleviation, animal welfare and environmental sustainability.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy pharmaceutical drugs vaccines
• engineering and technology other engineering and technologies food technology food safety
• medical and health sciences health sciences nutrition
• agricultural sciences animal and dairy science domestic animals animal husbandry

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

• FP7-KBBE - Specific Programme "Cooperation": Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

• KBBE-2009-1-3-04 - Tick borne diseases. Improvement of current vaccine and development of new vaccines for theileriosis and babesiosis through exploitation of genomic data – SICA (China and Central Asia)

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-KBBE-2009-3
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP-FP-SICA - Small/medium-scale focused research project for specific cooperation actions dedicated to international cooperation partner countries(SICA)

Coordinator

Participants (14)