African swine fever (ASF) is a serious and globally significant viral disease of domestic and Eurasian wild pigs for which there are currently no therapeutics applicable vaccines. Although traditional control mechanisms are effective in conventional housing systems for domestic pigs, they quickly reach their limits in wild animals. Vaccination would therefore be of great importance. In Europe, this could be considered for wild boar in particular, but also for other endangered pig species worldwide and could therefore also contribute to the preservation of biodiversity. Great successes have been achieved with oral vaccines, for example in the fight against classical swine fever.
The aim of the new EU-funded international collaborative project ASFaVIP (African Swine Fever attenuated live Vaccines In Pigs), led by PD Dr Sandra Blome of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI), is to make an oral vaccine available for the European market. In addition, the understanding of the immune response will be expanded and the influence of genetic factors of ASF viruses and hosts will be examined in detail.
Partners in the ASFaVIP project are Stichting Wageningen Research (NL), Sciensano (BE), the Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos of the Universidad de Castilla – La Mancha (ES), the Helmholtz center for environmental research (DE), the International Alliance for Biological Standardization (FR), Büro WildVet (DE), and as associated partners the Institute of Virology and Immunology IVI (CH), the United States Department of Agriculture, USDA and Zoetis as an industry partner (ES).
The constituting kick-off meeting with representatives of all participating institutions took place in Frankfurt/Main. Here, the first trials with the existing pilot vaccines were planned and methodological approaches harmonized between the partners.
