African swine fever (ASF) is a fatal disease of pigs and wild boar, prevalent across Europe, Asia, and Africa.
At present there is no safe and effective vaccine against ASFV and control measures are limited to biosecurity, rapid diagnosis of affected farms followed by quarantine and slaughter.
In this project we aim to support UK resilience to African swine fever in a number of different ways.
Firstly, we aim to develop vaccines that can be used to control the disease abroad and stop it coming to the UK in the first place.
Secondly, we will improve our understanding of ASFV epidemiology by investigating the role of biting flies in transmission and measuring the effect of animal products on the stability of ASFV in water. We will integrate these data into models for disease spread within and between farms developed by DEFRA. This will enable us to better predict the spread of the virus if it ever does reach the UK.
We aim to improve diagnostics by removing our reliance on primary cells derived from animals. We also propose to evaluate disinfectants for their ability to inactivate ASFV to increase the number of products available to disinfect farms and premises in the event of an outbreak.
Objectives
- Establish suitability of porcine macrophage cell lines to replace primary pig macrophages in diagnostic assays.
- Develop alternative diagnostic assays.
- Identify key antigens for protection in current vaccine compositions.
- Test optimised vaccine composition in immunisation and challenge experiments.
- Evaluate and characterise ASFV isolates that may threaten the UK in the future.
