£12m grant provided to tackle livestock and poultry viruses
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has awarded a £12m grant to two new research projects that aim to provide solutions to combat livestock and poultry viruses.
The collaborative project to investigate the foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) – The Molecular Biology of FMDV Replication: Towards New Methods of FMDV Disease Control – has been awarded more than £5.6m to transform the way the disease in controlled in the future.
The project will integrate the work of academics at the Pirbright Institute with those from the Universities of St Andrews, Leeds, Edinburgh and Dundee.
By investigating how the virus grows in, and interacts with, cells, researchers will utilise new knowledge to develop a new generation of more effective vaccines and improve diagnosis. They will also attempt to make a new type of virus that could only grow in specially designed "helper" cells – meaning the virus couldn't then grow in animals. This would make the use of existing conventional vaccines a much safer process.
The BBSRC has also awarded more than £6.2M to develop rapid responses to poultry viruses. This research will address important scientific challenges to allow better isolation and diagnosis of emerging viruses, as well as faster and better production of vaccines against them.
It is also hoped that the funding will help to establish the next generation of poultry virologists, to work in a scientific area where the UK is traditionally strong.
The research will involve close collaboration between academics at Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge and St George's, University of London – as well as experts from the Pirbright Institute and the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute.
With Strangles Awareness Week just around the corner (5-11 May), vets are being encouraged to share a survey about the disease with their horse-owning clients.
