Microsoft money will be aiding the Canadian livestock industry.
The Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization will receive $7 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The University of Saskatchewan-based research unit will use the money to refine the technology it has been developing for vaccine delivery.
Young mammals are vulnerable to infectious diseases and are difficult to effectively vaccinate.
Meanwhile the Gates Foundation is interested in preventing serious disease in children, especially in the Third World where treatment is either not available or not affordable.
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Researchers at VIDO have a long history of improvements to vaccine delivery for livestock and humans. One of the Gates-funded goals is to reduce the need for needles and booster shots while improving the vaccines’ ability to create strong immune responses in the very young.
The same technology that will make vaccines more effective in children will also apply to young livestock.
Volker Gerdts of VIDO heads up research in a neonatal immunization program in humans and swine. His research focuses on whooping cough in humans and E. coli and gut edema in young pigs.
He said the immune system protections passed on by mothers could seriously interfere with the ability of a vaccine to stimulate immune responses in newborns. If the vaccine fails to cause the newborn to set off its immune system alarms and produce antibodies, then it fails to create protection against infection.
While vaccines may be well designed, they often need help to stimulate the immune system to attack. That help comes in the form of an adjuvant.
Sylvia van den Hurk is a VIDO scientist developing a vaccination system and improved adjuvants that will protect calves from rotavirus and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Syncytial virus results in BRSV infections in dairy and beef cattle and causes RSV in human infants and toddlers.
It can establish itself in the lower respiratory tract and create a pathway for potentially lethal, secondary bacterial infections.
Current treatment is limited to reducing the damage of the bacterial pneumonia with antibiotics or anti-inflammatory drugs.
Rotavirus can produce severe diarrhea in humans and livestock. In cattle, the infection takes place shortly after birth and calves are vulnerable in the first two weeks of life.
Scours can be reduced by immunizing the dam within six weeks of delivery, and then boosting the newborn soon after birth. However, these vaccinations add cost to livestock production systems and are not 100 percent effective because they depend on passing of maternal antibodies in milk.
Treatments result in higher producer costs for facilities, labour, veterinary fees for drug and fluid therapy.
Van den Hurk and Gerdts are developing vaccine delivery systems that create immune responses in the mucosal surfaces of the upper respiratory tract where the viruses enter the body.
She said creating immune responses closest to the bacteria’s entry into the body is key to stopping disease establishment.
“We are developing a nasal spray (vaccination) to create an immune response in the upper airway,” she said.
Van den Hurk said the transfer of the technology between humans and animals is a direct benefit to producers.
