Currently, a deadly virus is a serious threat to Asian pig populations, scientists are trying to develop a vaccine to help protect the world’s pork supply.
According to the Australian “Sydney Morning Herald” website reported on August 20, farmers have long been fighting the spread of brakes by isolating and killing infected animals, but now with the devastating entry of African swine fever into East Asia, People are stepping up to find another solution.
According to the report, although the African swine fever virus does not infect humans, it is highly contagious and fatal to pigs.
Dr. Luis Rodriguez, head of the US Government’s Alien Animal Diseases Laboratory in Plum Island, New York, said: “In the face of this global threat, today’s emphasis on this research has increased significantly.”
One method of developing a vaccine is to inject an inactivated virus into an animal. Inactivated viruses no longer make animals sick, but they can cause the animal’s immune system to recognize the virus and produce antibodies. However, this method is not always effective for all viruses, for example, it is not effective against viruses that cause African swine fever.
This is why scientists have been developing vaccines in another way, using a virus that weakens vitality, not a dead virus. In the case of African swine fever, the problem that needs to be solved is how to accurately adjust the virus.
In Vietnam, African swine fever has caused 3.7 million pigs to be culled within six months, and the Vietnamese government said it is testing the vaccine, but did not provide any details about the project. In China, the government says scientists are working on a vaccine that can genetically modify the virus, and American scientists have been looking for it.
The US Department of Agriculture said it recently signed a secret agreement with a vaccine manufacturer to further develop one of the three vaccine candidates on Plame Island. Candidate vaccines are obtained by genetically modifying the virus to remove certain genes.
However, according to Linda Dixon, a biologist at the London-based Perbright Institute, which studies viral diseases, a large number of pigs need to be tested in a safe facility before the vaccine is introduced. Five years.
Post time: Aug-26-2019