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Expected benefits
The expected results will be a complete package with an epidemiological tool to support wild boar management and CSF control. In addition an orally administrable live marker vaccine with accompanying discriminatory tests and sampling protocols will be developed that may come into action if preventive CSF control fails. Because CSF affects several European countries, a multinational and multidisciplinary research effort is appropriate and will contribute to realise the objectives of the priority thematic area: policy-orientated research.
The development of an epidemiological and economic model for CSF eradication in wild boar in combination with the development of a live marker vaccine and accompanying diagnostic assays, to adapt this vaccine for use in wild boar with special attention to young animals will enhance European excellence in strategies to prevent or limit the introduction of an exotic agent (List A of OIE) and to avoid transmission of pathogens between species (wild life to farmed animals). It will reinforce considerably the competitiveness of the European pig production. By developing a vaccine with accompanied diagnostic assays the societal problem of mass killing of healthy animals can also be reduced.
Our proposal represents a much broader approach than what has been published so far in terms of marker vaccines and differentiating tests. Several, partly entirely novel approaches both in marker virus construction (full-length vs. replicon genomes, chimera vs. homologous genomes, assessment of various positive and negative markers) as well as in the development of differentiating tests (use of peptide vs. entire viral proteins, indirect vs. blocking ELISA) make it feasible that an optimal marker vaccine with its accompanying serological test which is ready for field application after completion of the present project, will indeed be available. No such products are available or even have been described so far. Several partners have recently obtained promising results with engineered pestivirus genomes or chimera.
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