Candidate Vaccine Protects Pigs against African Swine Fever Strains

Oct 29, 2021

By Greg Cima

A U.S. Department of Agriculture–developed vaccine protected pigs against African swine fever in a second study.

Results published Sept. 28 indicate pigs administered the candidate vaccine not only survived but often remained free of clinical signs of illness when experimentally inoculated with an ASF virus strain that has been circulating in Vietnam. The work follows previous results, published in April 2020 in the Journal of Virology, that indicated the candidate vaccine was effective against a strain first identified in 2007 in the country of Georgia.

The new results, published in September in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases, resulted from a collaboration of scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, which developed the vaccine, and National Veterinary Joint Stock Co., which conducted the studies at its facility in Vietnam. The study results are available online ahead of print.

Dr. Douglas Gladue, who is a research microbiologist for the ARS and one of the developers of the ASF candidate vaccine, said NAVETCO was able to show the vaccine protected European and Asian breeds of pigs against a virus strain recently isolated in Vietnam. His co-developer and fellow ARS research biologist Manuel Borca, PhD, said the vaccine was based on a 2007 isolate from the country of Georgia, and the report showed the vaccine could protect against a strain of ASF that had evolved in the years since.

Dr. Gladue said the company plans to conduct field trials in Vietnam, but those studies had not begun at press time.

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