Project description
A novel vaccine against brucellosis
Brucellosis is an infection that affects livestock and incurs substantial production losses. It is caused by the bacterial genus Brucella and can be transmitted from animals to humans through the ingestion of unpasteurised milk or infected meat. The key objective of the EU-funded BGV1 project is to address the problem of ineffective animal vaccines or limited vaccination capacity in certain countries. Researchers have developed a novel patented vaccine that can be employed in mass vaccination programmes to protect any animal at any time of their lives. Broad implementation of the BGV1 vaccine is expected to improve control of brucellosis and reduce economic losses in livestock production.
Objective
Brucellosis is consistently ranked as the world’s most common and widespread zoonotic disease, meaning that it normally exists in animals but it can also infect humans. In livestock, it causes devastating production losses in low-income countries accounting in more than €3bn per year. In humans, there are 500,000 new cases annually requiring long-term hospital treatments.
Brucellosis is endemic in most Asia, Africa and LATAM and is prevalent in the EU Mediterranean regions. Also, outbreaks may take place anywhere in a global world with international trading, people travelling all around the world and potential threat of bioterrorism.
Since human vaccines are not available, the most rational approach for preventing human brucellosis is the control and eradication of infection in animals. Animal vaccines are an essential tool, but existing vaccines own some inconveniences, such as residual virulence, complex management systems and costly diagnostic techniques that are not appropriate for developing countries; in Europe, control programs are based in tests for animal check-ups and compensation to farmers for slaughter of the infected animals, with vaccination prohibited or highly restricted to areas with higher prevalence of Brucellosis. These inconveniences recommended the development of new candidate vaccines.
We are developing BGV1, a patented vaccine that has the potential of allowing, for the first time, mass vaccination of any animal at any time (including pregnant and lactating animals), which is a radical paradigm shift in Brucellosis control and eradication. It also simplifies existing vaccine management systems as it can be used without interfering standard diagnostic techniques. In our 5-year forecast, we estimate accumulated revenue and net profits of €58.29m and €15.13m a conservative projection by just reaching 86.02m animals that represent only 3.92% of our TAM, generating 1.76bn economic benefits to our users.
Fields of science
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical transitionsterrorism
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsvaccines
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedomestic animalsanimal husbandry
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiologyzoonosis
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
31192 Mutilva
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.