Descrizione del progetto
La crescente minaccia della peste suina africana
La peste suina africana (ASF, african swine fever) è passata rapidamente dall’essere una malattia esotica a una minaccia globale per i suini domestici e selvatici (ovvero maiali e cinghiali). L’Europa è alle prese con diversi scenari di questa patologia, da introduzioni sporadiche a epidemie diffuse, particolarmente impegnative da eliminare per i cinghiali e negli allevamenti da cortile. I metodi di controllo convenzionali sono efficaci negli allevamenti industriali di suini, ma non riescono a controllare la malattia nelle popolazioni selvatiche o negli allevamenti di minori dimensioni. In questo contesto, il progetto ASFaVIP, finanziato dall’UE, mira a colmare questa lacuna testando vaccini promettenti, tra cui ASFV-G-ΔI177L, che ha dimostrato efficacia in Vietnam. Il progetto condurrà test sulla sicurezza e l’efficacia, oltre alla caratterizzazione della risposta immunitaria e all’ottimizzazione delle strategie di vaccinazione, fornendo dati fondamentali per valutare i benefici e i rischi legati all’impiego di vaccini contro questa patologia.
Obiettivo
"African swine fever (ASF) has recently transformed from an exotic disease to a panzootic threat to domestic and wild suids world-wide. Europe is currently facing different scenarios with front and point introductions, affected wild boar and domestic pig populations, epidemic and endemic situations. While our traditional prevention and control strategies work well with industrial pig farms, we quickly reach our limits when we have to control the disease in the abundant wild boar population or in regions with a majority of backyard farms. To turn the tide and to safeguard animal health, vaccines, especially oral vaccines for wild boar, could be the missing tool.
There has been considerable progress in vaccine development and while we should continue to look for alternative approaches, we must now also dare to test the promising candidates beyond simple proof-of-concept studies. Only in this way can we generate the data base for benefit-risk analysis of whether and how current generation vaccines could be employed.
Along these lines, this project sets out to test the vaccine candidate ""ASFV-G-ΔI177L"" in safety and efficacy tests after oral and intramuscular application as prescribed by international guidelines. This vaccine candidate has shown safety and very good protection under laboratory conditions and has been applied in the field in Vietnam. As a backup option, other promising candidates, “ASFV-G-ΔMGF” and “ASFV-G-Δ9GL/UK, will be tested in initial comparative trials. Accompanying the prescribed tests, our interdisciplinary consortium will characterize the protective immune responses, target the optimization of oral immunization and model tailored vaccination strategies. The data body generated in this project is crucial for benefit-risk-assessments at the level of all authorities entrusted with licensure and deployment of ASF vaccines and for this reason, relevant stakeholders will be involved from the start to guarantee full exploitation of our data."
Campo scientifico
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Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinatore
17493 Greifswald-Insel Riems
Germania