A vaccine designed to prevent African Swine Fever recently cleared a major regulatory hurdle in passing tests required for approval by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The passing of the tests was announced in an April 25 news release by the Agricultural Research Service. In the release, it was announced the vaccine candidate has been cleared by a safety test. Without passing the test, the vaccine would not have the regulatory approval required for it to be widely and commercially available.
"This is a critical milestone for the ASF vaccine candidate," Manual Borca, ARS senior scientist, said in the release. "These safety studies bring this vaccine one step closer to being available on the market."
The test was required for this vaccine because it contains a live, but weaker version of the pathogen at the cause of African Swine Fever. In live vaccines, the test must be passed due to the concern that the pathogen evolves and regains the ability to harm the subject.
"It is very hard to predict how selective pressure can cause a live attenuated vaccine to return to virulence," Douglas Gladue, ARS senior scientist, said in the release. "In the case of this particular vaccine candidate, ASFV-G-DI177L, we deleted a gene, which makes it difficult for the virus to simply add the gene back. So, we expected reversion to its original form to be unlikely, but the test still has to be performed."
