Objective
The poultry industry is facing increasing problems due to the emergence of progressively more virulent forms of pathogenic viruses, which require increasingly effective vaccines to prevent disease. However, vaccine strains aggressive enough to protect against these new viruses can themselves cause pathogenic effects. The aim of this project is to overcome this problem by identifying the specific peptides within vaccines which cause the strongest vaccine response in animals of particular genotypes, so that combinations of vaccine and host genotype can be developed which maximise both the strength and consistency of protection.
There has been rapid progress in understanding the manner in which the immune system recognises and reacts to foreign molecules, and it is now clear that this process depends crucially on the ability of molecules of the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) to present small peptide fragments of proteins to the immune system. Only a small proportion of the peptide fragments present in viral proteins are presented in this way, and animals with different MHC molecules present distinct, very specific, subsets of these peptides. It is already known that chickens of some MHC types respond well to certain vaccines. By systematically extending this information it will be possible to identify animals of similar genotypes in commercial flocks. More dramatically, it will be possible to characterise the particular viral peptides these MHC types present, making it possible to improve vaccines both by increasing the proportion of these peptides in the vaccines and by matching particular vaccines to birds of particular MHC types. By identifying and selecting the MHC types present in flocks it will then be possible to optimise vaccination. Most significantly, this will make it possible to create vaccines in which different components are optimised to stimulate the maximum protection of a number of different host MHC types, creating a epidemiological situation much less favourable to the development of forms of the virus able to overcome the vaccine.
In this project, work will concentrate on infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) and Marek's disease virus (MDV), the viruses that cause two of the most serious diseases of European poultry. These diseases are ideal candidates for this approach since in both cases, current vaccines suffer from the problems outlined above and MHC-related differences in response to current vaccines have already been shown.
These viruses rovide tests of this a roach for a relatively small and simple virus (IBDV) and for a large and highly complex virus (MDV).
Although this work is targeted at IBDV and MDV the methodology developed should apply equally to other vaccines both in poultry and in other farm animals, and may ultimately be of relevance to man
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 virology
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules proteins
- medical and health sciences basic medicine immunology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy pharmaceutical drugs vaccines
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Coordinator
RG20 7NN Newbury
United Kingdom
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