Researchers Evaluate Nanoparticles to Protect Fertility During Intrauterine Vaccination

Researchers with the Vaccine and infectious Disease Organization are evaluating the use of nanoparticles to protect fertility when administering intrauterine vaccines to sows and gilts during artificial insemination. Researchers with the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization have developed the first intrauterine vaccines to protect sows, gilts and their piglets from Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea and over the next year will be assessing various formulations to determine which are the most protective to the sow and what gets passed on to protect the piglets.

Dr. Heather Wilson, a research scientist with VIDO, explains delivering the vaccine with the semen during artificial insemination eliminates the need for needles and is a lot less stressful.

Clip-Dr. Heather Wilson-Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization:

The main challenge we have is we have to formulate the vaccine so that it doesn't have any negative effects on the sperm. We have collaboration with Dr. Haddadi's lab in Pharmacy to help us formulate nanoparticles.

We're encompassing the vaccine in a shell for want of a better word that will keep the vaccine separate from the semen so it's not spermicidal and then, once it's administered into the uterus, it can get broken down and accessed by the uterine immune system.

Over the next year or so we are going to administer the vaccine with many different nanoparticle formulations to see which vaccine formulations are the most protective. We're actually looking at what's protective to the gilt and the sow as well as what gets passed along into the colostrum to protect the piglets so there's two things we have to focus on, the sow and passive protection to the piglets.