Objective
There are about 82 million cattle in the EU, most of which are exposed to infection with gastro-intestinal nematodes at grazing, with resultant, often substantial, impaired production efficiency. The most common and most pathogenic of these nematodes is Ostertagia ostertagi, which infects the abomasum of cattle.
Control of O. ostertagi in Europe is based almost exclusively on the use of anthelmintic drugs. However, these drugs have several drawbacks such as the high costs, interference with natural immunity, drug residues in food products and in the environment and the increasing incidence of parasite resistance against the anthelmintics. Vaccination is being considered as the most feasible alternative to anthelmintics.
Recently, we identified three excretory-secretory antigens from O. ostertagi which induced practically useful levels of protection (~60% in faecal egg counts) in calves against a homologous infection. Unfortunately, it is practically unfeasible to harvest large quantities of the native antigens for vaccine production on a large scale.
The challenge now is to produce these antigens in an immunologically active form using DNA technology. Recombinant versions of several gastrointestinal nematodes antigens, produced in bacteria, yeast or insect cells, have proven to be largely ineffective.
Glycan is strongly implicated in protection, is quite unique to nematodes and is predicted to be highly immunogenic. A solution is to develop an expression system in the free-living nematode C. elegans where post-translational modifications closely resemble those found in parasitic nematodes.
Focussed work is required to improve the level of expression by investigating the use of different promoters and different sites of expression in C. elegans tissues. This is the primary focus of the present proposal.
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: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology bacteriology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy pharmaceutical drugs vaccines
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules carbohydrates
- social sciences economics and business economics production economics
- agricultural sciences animal and dairy science domestic animals animal husbandry
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Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
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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.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP6-2002-MOBILITY-5
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Funding Scheme
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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.
Coordinator
PENICUIK
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.