Test tells foot-and-mouth from vaccine

Tag : biochemical reagents
Thursday, 19 June 2008 CSIRO
Researchers at the CSIRO’s Australian Animal HealthLaboratory have developed a new test for foot-and-mouth diseasethat involves no infectious viral material and can differentiatebetween infected and vaccinated animals. This ‘DIVA’test could transform how foot-and-mouth disease is controlled infuture, because it’s so inexpensive and does not requireinfectious virus to produce the reagents.
The British government decided against using vaccines to control amajor outbreak in 2001, because the tests available to them couldnot distinguish between infected and vaccinated animals. So,vaccinated animals would look like they were infected and wouldhave to be treated in the same way. The outbreak was finallycontained only after the slaughter of more than six millionanimals. Most were not infected.
“Our test is the first in the world to be built entirely fromnon-living materials produced in the laboratory,” says JanineMuller, who developed the test with CSIRO colleagues whilecompleting her PhD. She is now a research scientist with theVictorian Department of Primary Industries.
“We have been able to build and manufacture the criticalcomponents of our test from the ground up. They are biochemicalcompounds, that are not alive, and can’t becomeinfectious.”
“We unravelled the structure of an antibody to an importantprotein the virus injects into cells. We then generated its genetictemplate and used it to engineer the antibodies at the heart of thetest.”
Foot-and-mouth disease, a highly contagious viral infection, isconsidered the most economically devastating disease affecting farmanimals worldwide. It spreads rapidly and is a huge threat totrade. An outbreak in Australia would instantly shut down the meatand livestock industry and would cost between $8 and $13 billion interms of lost production, trade and disease eradication.
The new test, which can pinpoint vaccinated animals, hasapplication worldwide where the cost of producing reagents is acritical factor. The test itself is not used for primary diagnosisbut in the control and recovery phase where material being testedis highly unlikely to be of an infectious nature and testing can becarried out at a lower level of biocontainment.
The test itself is a faster and more sensitive way of detecting thedisease in livestock.
“This work is a great example of practical research that canprovide real benefits to an industry,” says Terry Longhurst,Strategic Science Manager at Meat and Livestock Australia which,together the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre,funded the research.