By Bruce Cochrane
The Associate Director Research with VIDO-InterVac says a European pharmaceutical company is working to fast track the commercialization of a new vaccine designed to protect neonatal piglets from the ravages of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
Clinical trials conducted in the lab and in commercial sow barns in Manitoba and Saskatchewan have shown a vaccine developed over the past two years by VIDO-InterVac to be 80 to 90 percent effective in protecting neonatal piglets from PED.
The vaccine is administered to the sow four to five weeks before farrowing and again two weeks before farrowing and immunity is passed to her piglets in the colostrum.
Dr. Volker Gerdts, the Associate Director Research with VIDO-InterVac, says the vaccine has now been licenses for commercialization.
Dr. Volker Gerdts-VIDO-InterVac:
I'm happy to confirm that we have signed a license agreement with Huvepharma.
That's a European company that specializes in human and animal health.
Huvepharma has been licensed to the North American market and they are taking the vaccine now into commercial development.
I think Huvepharma is keen on getting this onto the market as quickly as possible.
They are fast tracking the manufacturing as quickly as possible.
I would hope to see the vaccine within a very short time frame.
I can't give you an exact year but Huvepharma is clearly interested in making this vaccine available to North American producers as quickly as they can.
Dr. Gerdts says this is another example of VIDO's vision, when new diseases emerge that teams are rapidly assembled to develop vaccines.
He says within two years VIDO-InterVac was able to develop a vaccine for PED that is now being commercialized.
Source: Farmscape
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