Food securityBreakthrough for Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccine

When it comes to livestock, foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is probably the most devastating picornavirus on the planet.

In December of 2019, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published a patent application titled “Modified Picornavirus 3C Proteases and Methods Thereof” to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) inventors Dr. John Neilan and Dr. Michael Puckette at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC).  If these names sound familiar, you might have read about another recent breakthrough of theirs related to detection of African Swine Fever in pigs.  

To appreciate how S&T’s work may revolutionize the global agricultural economy, one must first understand what FMD is and grasp its vast international impact.

What is FMD?

FMD is a serious and economically devastating livestock disease. Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV), the virus causing FMD, is extremely contagious and afflicts animals with cloven hooves like cows, pigs, sheep and deer. It should not be confused with hand-foot-and-mouth disease, which primarily affects humans, especially young children.

S&T says that when FMD strikes livestock, it causes painful blisters in and around the mouth, nose, mammary glands, and hooves. When the blisters burst, they leave raw open wounds that are susceptible to secondary bacterial infections. Along with physical discomfort, the animals experience disinterest in eating and pain when moving, standing, and milking. Although the overall FMD mortality rate in adult livestock is relatively low, it can prove fatal for young animals. Survivors are often left in a weakened state and are generally incapable of producing draught-animal power, milk, meat, or offspring at the levels they had before infection.

What Makes the PIADC Invention Such a Breakthrough?
FMD vaccines have been commercially produced and used since the mid-1960s, however there are significant issues with them.

First, FMD vaccine manufacturing is historically based on injecting inactivated (dead) FMDV into livestock. Since the U.S. has been an FMD-free country for almost 100 years, by law these FMD vaccines are prohibited from being produced on the U.S. mainland. “Manufacturing of FMDV prior to its inactivation carries the risk of accidental release if proper biosafety procedures are not followed,” said Dr. Puckette, the project leader and a microbiologist at PIADC. “It also carries the risk of an accidental outbreak if there are errors in the manufacturing procedure.”