710132Applied research of a novel foot and mouth disease vaccineClosedGRD Proof of ConceptInnovate UKThis application is for a Proof of Concept grant to see if it is feasible to overcome current technical difficulties with a system that would potentially allow the production of improved foot and mouth (FMD) vaccines without the use of live virus. We propose to use advanced biotechnical techniques that could result in cheaper and more effective vaccines without the risk of escape of live virus along the lines of the 2007 escape from Pirbright in Surrey. The foot and mouth vaccine market is divided in two: countries where vaccination is used to control foot and mouth such as China, India, and Brazil; and those, such as the UK, Europe and North America, where a stock of vaccine is kept should culling prove unable to control an outbreak, total market estimated to be in excess of £350mill. There is little or no cross-protection across the seven FMD serotypes (A, O, C, Asia 1, Sat 1, Sat 2 and Sat 3) and a large number of subtypes requiring vaccines that are matched to circulating field strains. We believe our technology will lead to the opportunity to manufacture vaccines in the UK for export to the rest of the world where vaccination is used to control foot and mouth, an opportunity not possible with the current technology which would use live strains of exotic strains of foot and mouth. We believe our approach could also be used to produce, without the risk of live virus escape, more effective vaccines than those currently stockpiled in countries such as the UK for use in conjunction with culling. The technologies allow for the rapid incorporation of emerging field strain sequences and could also respond rapidly to the more damaging situation of a new strain outbreak which is not possible with existing vaccine production methods. FMD is one of the most economically and socially devastating animal diseases globally and such a tool combined with other integrated strategies would have major economic and social benefit to the UK, EU and many other regions of the world.