Press releases

Researchers in the UK, led by The Pirbright Institute are to receive £3.1 million of investment to produce a more affordable and effective vaccine to protect animals against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD).

Foot-and-mouth disease is endemic in large parts of Africa, South America, the Middle East and Asia and, globally, is the most economically important infectious disease of livestock, affecting cattle, pigs, sheep and goats and other cloven-footed animals.

Researchers at The Pirbright Institute in collaboration with partners at the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory on Plum Island USA, have shown that foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) can be detected in milk samples using a method that is potentially sensitive enough to identify the virus in pooled milk stored in bulk tanks or milk tankers. These encouraging results indicate that testing of milk samples could contribute to disease surveillance both during and after outbreaks.

A research team led by Dr Erica Bickerton at The Pirbright Institute has genetically modified an infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) vaccine strain so that it can be grown in cell cultures in the lab rather than in hen eggs, which could make vaccine production more efficient and reduce costs.

New simple techniques created by scientists at The Pirbright Institute are able to detect the presence of foot-and-mouth disease virus from samples in the farm environment, even when susceptible animals are not showing clinical signs.