A new five-year collaboration agreement is now in place between The Pirbright Institute and Diamond Light Source, which aims to enable scientists to study viral diseases in greater detail.
Researchers from The Pirbright Institute have been awarded US $5.5 million by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to establish a Livestock Antibody Hub aimed at improving animal and human health globally. The ambitious programme of work will see extensive collaboration between multiple UK research organisations in order to utilise research outcomes in livestock disease and immunology to support human health as part of the ‘One Health’ agenda.
Collaborative research has shown that a new vaccine, ChAdOx1 RVF, is effective at protecting pregnant sheep and goats from Rift Valley fever (RVF), a debilitating disease that can also be transmitted to humans. Scientists from The Pirbright Institute worked with The Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, Wageningen Bioveterinary Research in the Netherlands, BioVacc Consulting Ltd and the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya on this project.
Scientists from The Pirbright Institute and The Roslin Institute have launched The Immunological Toolbox, a website that provides a platform for veterinary researchers to find resources and collaborate. The Toolbox aims to remove barriers to veterinary vaccine development by providing a central database of reagents and aiding information exchange.
The Pirbright Institute has entered into a worldwide exclusive partnership with ECO Animal Health Ltd (ECO), a wholly owned subsidiary of ECO Animal Health Group plc, on two new projects to combat significant diseases of poultry.
The Pirbright Institute and its research partners have granted MSD Animal Health an exclusive commercial licence for a new, effective and affordable vaccine to protect livestock against several serotypes of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV). The new vaccine is more stable than current foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccines and is less reliant on a cold-chain during vaccine distribution – characteristics that give the vaccine greater potential for helping to relieve the burden placed on regions where the disease is endemic in large parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Scientists at The Pirbright Institute have identified African swine fever virus (ASFV) proteins that can trigger an immune response in pigs. The team hopes to develop a vaccine using these proteins that is capable of protecting against the deadly pig disease.
On 14 June 2019, scientists at The Pirbright Institute destroyed the final archive stocks of rinderpest virus held in the World Reference Laboratory for Rinderpest. This completed a major milestone in the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) programme to ensure the world remains free from the eradicated disease.
The Pirbright Institute returned as a festival sponsor to Cheltenham Science Festival between 7 and 9 June 2019. Pirbright’s theme this year was ‘Viral Survival’, which centred on diseases that can spread from animals to people, called zoonoses, and how Pirbright scientists are working on different strategies to predict and prevent pandemics.
Researchers at The Pirbright Institute will partner with the Belgian biotechnology company ViroVet to develop the first antiviral drugs that act against African swine fever (ASF). In the absence of a vaccine, antiviral drugs could provide an alternative control method which would help limit clinical signs in pigs and lower virus replication. This could reduce the spread of disease and help to contain outbreaks, ultimately reducing the number of pigs lost to this deadly viral infection.
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