Project Number: 1940-32000-056-00
Project Type: Appropriated

Start Date: Oct 11, 2011
End Date: Oct 10, 2016

Objective:
1. Develop intervention strategies to control and eradicate CSF virus by determining immune mechanisms mediating early protection and its application in blocking infection and preventing transmission and by discovering effective CSF vaccine and diagnostic platforms specifically designed for disease control and eradication. 2. Develop intervention strategies to control ASF virus by identifying virus-host determinants of virulence and transmission and by developing technologies to enable the development of ASF vaccines that are efficacious against the most prevalent ASF strains.

Approach:
To develop strategies to control CSF virus and further vaccine and diagnostic platforms, improvements and further assessment will be conducted on ARS, PIADC previously developed live attenuated candidate marker vaccine strain (FlagT4v); inclusive of minimal protective dose response, toxicity, antibody response and genetic stability assessments. Studies will focus on protective innate immune mechanisms induced in swine after vaccination with live attenuated CSFV vaccine strains. Evaluation of native and modified forms of CSFV envelope proteins to analyze their capacity to induce rapid protective immune responses against infection with CSFV as a preliminary step in development of fast acting subunit marker vaccines. Development of intervention strategies to control ASF virus will be done by identifying virus-host determinants of virulence and transmission and by developing technologies to enable the development of ASF vaccines that are efficacious against the most prevalent ASF strains. In vivo experimental models to study ASFV pathogenesis and host immune response in swine will be developed. Studies will focus on minimal lethal dose percentages, and early pathogenesis model with a virulent ASFV. The critical pathogenic and immunological mechanisms leading to protection against ASF will be identified. Technologies will be developed to enable the production of live attenuated vaccines for ASF.