Award details

Studentship: Autophagy and African swine fever virus

Reference	BBS/E/I/00002120
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr Christopher Netherton
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Philippa Hawes
Institution	The Pirbright Institute
Department	The Pirbright Institute Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	21,909
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	05/10/2015
End date	31/03/2017
Duration	17 months

Abstract

Diseases of domestic livestock are an ever present threat to the challenge of feeding an increasing global population. African swine fever virus has existed in a natural cycle between warthogs and soft ticks for millennia, but causes a lethal, highly contagious, haemorrhagic fever in domestic swine and wild boar. In 2007, African swine fever was introduced into Georgia, probably through contaminated waste from a ship, and since has spread throughout most of European Russia and has now been reported in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Effective vaccines against African swine fever are desperately needed. Autophagy is a highly conserved intracellular pathway that has evolved to breakdown and recycle damaged cytoplasmic components by delivering them to lysosomes. Autophagy can also be induced in response to physiological stress, most notably that of starvation (The word autophagy literally means self-eat in Greek). Many important responses to infection are dependent on the autophagy pathway and pathogens have evolved mechanisms to manipulate autophagy for their own benefit. Recent experiments have demonstrated that disrupting the ability of viruses to inhibit autophagy can enhance immune responses. We have shown that African swine fever virus can block part of the autophagy pathway, raising the possibility that deletion of viral proteins that inhibit autophagy may enhance the immunogenicity of a live attenuated ASFV vaccine. The major aims of this project are to further characterise the effect of African swine fever virus infection on the autophagy pathway, identify novel autophagy inhibitors in the African swine fever genome and generate recombinant viruses lacking these genes. The findings from these studies will contribute to the development of safe and effective, live attenuated ASFV vaccine candidates.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Animal Health, Immunology, Microbiology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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