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Work lead by Dr. Fernando Rodriguez, IRTA researcher from the CReSA Animal Health Program, demonstrates the feasibility of designing a safe and efficient vaccine against African swine fever virus (ASFV) in the near future. There is no vaccine available today to fight ASF.
Dr. Rodriguez’s team has confirmed the presence of multiple potential vaccine candidates, larger than previously thought. Specifically identifying them will allow developing safe and efficient subunit vaccines in the future. Protection correlated with the induction of specific CD8 T-cells capable to efficiently eliminate the intracellular virus, where antibodies can´t reach.
CReSA researchers have been able to demonstrate that DNA immunization with ASFV-gene libraries (complex mixtures of DNA plasmids encoding different fragments of the ASFV genome) improves the protection conferred by DNA vaccines encoding one or few immunodominant antigens. In order to achieve this protection, the gene library was specifically designed to induce optimal CD8 T-cell responses.
This work has been possible thanks to the collaboration established between the Animal Health Program of the Institut de Recerca i Tecnologia Agroalimentàries (IRTA) at the Centre de Recerca en Sanitat Animal (CReSA) from Bellaterra (Spain), Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (CBMSO) from Madrid (Sapin), y Agence Nationale de Sécurité Sanitaire de l'Alimentation, de l'Environnement, et du Travail (ANSES) from Ploufragan (France).
Monday March 23, 2015/ CReSA/ Spain.
http://www.cresa.es
