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  • Work Package 7

  • WP7: A novel African swine fever vaccine for interface regions

  • Work package objective: WP7

    The aim of work package 7 (WP7) was to develop a viral vectored vaccine against the strain of African swine fever virus (ASFV) that is infecting domestic pigs and wild boar in Eastern Europe.

  • WP7
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Work package WP7: Aims

Pigs protected against challenge with virulent ASFV were generated with live attenuated viruses and then T-cell antigens were identified by screening cells against peptides sequences derived from the Georgia 2007/1 strain of ASFV.

T-cells responding to the different antigens were phenotyped and compared to the response to whole virus. More than thirty different potential antigens were identified and a selection of these were incorporated into replication deficient adenoviruses. These were then tested in immunisation and challenge experiments in pigs.

Longitudinal samples were taken to analyse the immune responses generated by the vaccination regime. All of the antigens tested proved to be immunogenic and either generated antibody, or T-cell responses, or both. However, virus-specific responses were relatively poor compared to other African swine fever vaccines and ultimately the pigs were not protected after challenge with the strain of ASFV currently circulating within the borders of the EU.