Press releases

Pirbright attended the prestigious Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2022 last week, the first in-person event of its kind since 2019.

The event, which showcases cutting-edge science for people of all ages, featured only 16 exhibits this year and The Pirbright Institute was delighted to have been selected to attend.

Research at the Pirbright Institute reveals that foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) interacts with immune cells in tissues called lymphoid tissues, which are an essential part of the immune system.

This helps the virus to persist in animals such as African buffalo and allows these animals to become ‘carriers of the disease, which in turn poses a risk to other susceptible livestock.

Understanding how the animal immune system fights FMDV may provide further insight into how to create vaccines that give long-lasting immunity to livestock.

Researchers at Pirbright have developed a pig respiratory coronavirus (PRCV) model which will help to understand how coronaviruses cause disease and how the immune system responds to them.

Human coronaviruses such as Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) are spread from animals to people, these are known as zoonotic viruses. Research to understand coronaviruses and how to control and prevent their spread has the potential to benefit human and animal health.

Pirbright scientists recently developed a potential bird flu vaccine that offered better protection to chickens. This vaccine was easier and less costly to produce than traditional flu vaccines.