Major new grant will help future vaccine development and secure safe food supplies
13 October 2011
Researchers in Scotland have secured nearly £1 million to learn more about the immune systems of livestock and develop sheep and cattle vaccines.
With the global population continuing to grow, food security is becoming a real challenge. There is a pressing need to apply new technologies and knowledge to help ensure sustainable, safe and healthy food supplies, while reducing the impact on the environment. Effective vaccines are the most efficient way of preventing the transmission and spread of infectious diseases in cattle and sheep. However there are still many diseases for which no effective vaccines exist and the lack of knowledge of the immune systems of these animals is considered to be a major block to strategic vaccine development.
However, thanks to a major grant from the BBSRC and the Scottish Government, scientists from Moredun Research Institute near Edinburgh, working in partnership with colleagues from the nearby Roslin Institute will undertake detailed investigations of the immune responses of sheep and cattle, vitally underpinning the development of vaccines in the future. The work will be done in conjunction and with the support of an industrial partner, AbD Serotec. This will ensure that the techniques and reagents developed in the project will be widely available to the scientific community in order to support future vaccine research.
A critical component in designing effective vaccines is to understand how the immune system is able to protect against a variety of different infections. The ability to both measure and induce immune responses in livestock using components of the organisms that cause disease is an absolute requirement for rational vaccine design. Moredun has a long history in immunology research in farm livestock and is recognised as a world leader in this area.
Professor Gary Entrican from Moredun Research Institute (and Honorary Professor at The Roslin Institute) is leading this project in collaboration with The Roslin Institute's Professor Liz Glass. He commented, "We need to know more about immune responses in cattle and sheep if we are to develop new vaccines to prevent diseases. Ultimately this project will lead to improvements in the health and welfare of our farmed animals, therefore making our livestock industry more productive."
For further information please contact Maggie Bennett, Communications Manager, Moredun Research Institute
T: +44 (0)131 445 5111, M: +44 (0) 7979 695626, E: margaret.bennett@moredun.org.uk.
