Researchers with VIDO-InterVac are developing a safer easily identifiable vaccine to protect pigs from Lawsonia intracellularis. Lawsonia intracellularis, a bacteria found in about 90 percent of the world's swine herds, causes Ileitis, a swelling of the intestine in pigs. Researchers with VIDO-InterVac are developing a subunit DIVA vaccine which will allow the differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals.
Dr. Heather Wilson, a research scientist with VIDO-InterVac, says researchers are now narrowing down the choices of proteins to include in the vaccine.
Clip-Dr. Heather Wilson-VIDO-InterVac:
We've done a couple fancy little molecular things to identify the proteins of interest and we've found 11 to choose from out of the hundreds and hundreds that are in the bacteria and, from those 11, we’ve further narrowed them down. Some of them are better at triggering an antibody response, some are better at triggering a t-cell response.
We're further narrowing that down so that we can do some challenge studies to see if subunit protein one, two or three alone or together actually show a good protection from disease. Now what we do is we just keep running trials and changing the adjuvant platform, which is something that you add to the vaccine to try to trigger an antibody or a t-cell response or both.
We need to play around with the concentration of subunit proteins that we add, the routes of immunization. Ideally, we would put it in dinking water or have it as a mist or something like that so it could be easy to administer. All of these things is a new set of experiments and data collection and then try to get together a good package showing that we've got a very nice vaccine that is protective.
Source : Farmscape