The Director and CEO of VIDO-InterVac says the use of an adenovirus as a vector to deliver the proteins needed to stimulate an immune response to African Swine Fever is among the safest approaches to providing protection from the disease. Researchers around the world are using a variety of techniques to develop vaccines to protect pigs from African Swine Fever. The approach being used by VIDO-InterVac involves inserting specific proteins from African Swine Fever into another harmless virus for delivery as a vaccine.
VIDO-InterVac Director and CEO Dr. Volker Gerdts says using an adenovirus as a vector allows you to stimulate an immune response but you don't have to actually expose the herd to African Swine Fever.
Clip-Dr. Volker Gerdts-VIDO-InterVac:
I think there is good indication from other labs that adenoviral vectors are potent and may work for African Swine Fever so I think there is great promise in that these adenoviruses will work as a vaccine for African Swine Fever.
The other nice thing about them, and this is really important in the context of biosecurity. Using an adenovirus as a vector offers the advantage that you don't have to actually use the virus, the African Swine Fever virus.
Everything we do is working the adenoviral vector and so we're not really including, at any step, the African Swine Fever virus in this process. That is very important from a biosecurity point of view to ensure that our Canadian swine herd is safe and that we're not by accident introducing the virus into the herd.
Source : Farmscape