Group Publications

Staff, Current Grants

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Staff:..Dr. Uday Pathania, Ms. Fiona Tulloch

 
Wellcome Trust Infection & Immunity Panel

"New disease control strategies for foot-and-mouth disease”.

1/3/2010- 28/2/2013. £188,123

Background: Foot-and-Mouth Disease. The 2001 and 2007 UK outbreaks of FMDV illustrated the economic damage and social disruption that this animal disease can inflict upon a developed society. FMDV is an ever-present threat to world agriculture and causes proportionally much higher damage to the agriculture of developing nations. Since FMDV exists in wild-animal reservoirs around the globe, re-introduction of the disease into domesticated livestock poses an on-going problem. Although vaccines are available, these are produced by the large-scale growth of highly virulent virus follwed by chemical inactivation. Escape of virus from such production facilities similarly poses an on-going hazzard to agriculture.

New Disease Control Strategies. Albert Sabin developed live, attenuated, vaccine strains for a related virus, polio. This was accomplished in the early 1950s before the availability of complete genome sequences or the development of modern molecular biological methods to manipulate such genomes. His work, alongside that of Jonas Salk, transformed public health in this area. Our vision is to extend our knowledge as to how this virus replicates within cells and use this knowledge to 'rationally design' and construct new, attenuated, strains of FMDV that can be used for vaccines.

FMDV Research. By law, only licensed, high disease secure, facilities can work with the infectious agent - the virus. There is, however, a form of the genome - the 'replicon' - which has a large deletion in the genome encoding the capsid proteins. This modified form of the genome is able to replicate within a cell, but is completely unable to 'package' itself into a particle: the genome cannot be transmitted from one cell into the next cell, let alone into an animal. It cannot cause a disease. The HSE and DEFRA have granted permission for studies using this bio-secure form of the genome outwith such disease security facilities. The Wellcome Trust have supported research specifically designed towards the creation of new, attenuated, vaccine strains of FMDV.

 
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