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Submitted to: American Association of Avian Pathologists
Publication Type: Proceedings Publication Acceptance Date: 7/2/2007 Publication Date: 7/15/2007 Citation: Suarez, D.L. 2007. Future of vaccines for the poultry industry. In: Proceedings of the American Association of Avian Pathologists Symposium, Biotechnology--Impact on Poultry Health, July 15, 2007, Washington, DC. p. 48-52. Interpretive Summary: We continue to improve our understanding of avian immunology and are gaining new technological tools that have potential to be used for the immunization of domestic animals. With all these advances we still have to balance the protection that we receive from treatment (i.e. vaccination) versus the cost to administer the treatment. The poultry industry is an extremely difficult sector of animal agriculture to vaccinate for because of the low value for individuals birds, the short production lives for most birds, and the costs to administer vaccines. The broiler industry provides the most extreme example with an extremely small margin per bird, extremely short production lives, and the difficulty of vaccinating large numbers of birds once placed in the house. New technologies are likely too provide major advances in vaccinations, and some of the areas of advances will be further addressed. Technical Abstract: The role of biotechnology to develop new and innovative vaccines for both veterinary and human health has been slower than most scientists would have predicted 10 years ago. The issues with poultry have been both regulatory and economic. For example, the viral vectored vaccines have higher regulatory hurtles that require longer and more costly licensure requirements. In addition, the new technology often has higher costs associated with patents and investment in new technology that has made it difficult to compete on cost with existing technologies even when the new vaccines have distinctive advantages. The trend, however, is positive for the continued licensing of new technologies. The use of virus vectored vaccines will continue to grow in importance, although safety and vaccine spread will remain issues particularly in some parts of the world. For safety concerns, the use of replication restricted viruses will provide benefits to the industry if it can be produced in a cost effective manner. Vectors that can spread laterally may be valuable for mass vaccination, but they are likely to face stiff regulatory scrutiny. Alternative technologies such as plant based protein expression systems may provide unique advantages. The goal of feed based vaccines, however, are still far from fruition. Our understanding of the innate immune response and how to target different immunological pathways are likely going to open up the area of adjuvants. The understanding of how to target the immune response to improve either antibody or cell mediated immune response will likely provide better vaccine protection with fewer side effects of vaccination. Biotechnologies impact on vaccine will continue to blossom as we improve our understanding the benefits and risks of the technology. |
