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ABSTRACT

SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME
PRIORITY [SSP/8.1]
[Policy-oriented Research Priority]

STREP: SPECIFIC TARGETED RESEARCH OR INNOVATION PROJECT

Project summary:
There is a strong desire to reduce reliance on large-scale culling of animals to control future outbreaks of FMD in EU Member States. As an alternative, it is proposed to use emergency vaccination and then to screen for residual infection using tests for antibodies to the non-structural proteins of FMD virus. It is intended to amend the policy on FMD control to enable such an approach to be used in the very near future. In reality, this means that current contingencies must be based on the use of existing vaccines. Therefore, this project seeks to address the specific gaps in our knowledge and technological ability with respect to the implementation of a vaccinate-to-live policy. The availability of adequate discriminatory diagnostic tests is the keystone of the new EU FMD control policy. The project is focused on the validation of NSP-based tests to discriminate unequivocally between infected and vaccinated animals, in order to allow the implementation of the new policy in the immediate term. Validation of existing and new NSP-tests as confirmatory tests will be a major output of this project. The experimental design will also provide expected outputs in the field of the impact of vaccination on the carrier state and on virus dissemination, the onset of vaccinal protection, vaccine potency in relation to emergency use, vaccine strain selection and new marker vaccines. This project focuses on marker vaccines to induce durable protection against FMD. Conventional and marker vaccines will be targeted to dendritic cells with particular attention to promote dendritic cell mucosal homing (from parental immunisation), because mucosal immunity can prevent FMD virus establishing local infection and the carrier status.