Novel Recombinant Vaccine for Lung Plague Offers Advantages Over Existing Commercial Vaccine

The Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization is targeting mid-2027 for the commercial scale distribution of a vaccine that will protect cattle from Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia.

The University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in partnership with the Kenya Agricultural Livestock Research Organization and the International Livestock Research Institute have developed a new vaccine to protect cattle from Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, or lung plague, a disease typically found in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Jose Perez-Casal, a research scientist with VIDO and an Adjunct Professor with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, says the vaccine is based on recombinant proteins from the pathogens that cause CBPP.

Quote-Dr. Jose Perez-Casal-Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization:

We found 65 candidate proteins and these proteins were formulated with commercial adjuvants and injected into animals.After that we did a challenge with the pathogen and we identified four candidate proteins that were promising and those four proteins were selected for further study.

So, we recently just completed a new trial where the experimental vaccine composed of the four antigens was compared to the available commercial vaccine using a novel nebulization challenge model that we developed here at VIDO.

After vaccination and challenge, our novel recombinant vaccine showed 56 percent protection against lung lesions versus 46 percent protection conferred by the commercial vaccine.

The advantages of the recombinant vaccine over the current live attenuated commercial vaccine are thermal stability, it's more cost effective, it's easier to monitor its production, producers can use antibiotics after vaccination and also, we can run tests to distinguish between vaccinated animals from the animals that were naturally infected.

Dr. Perez-Casal estimates the vaccine could be ready for industry uptake by the middle of 2027.