Control of Rinderpest and Peste des Petits Ruminants Infections: Development of Oral Vaccine, Role of Wildlife in the Maintenance of These Diseases

The main objective of the project is to develop oral vaccines against rinderpest (RP) and peste des petits ruminants infections (PPR) which will be easier to administer to animals than the existing vaccines. Specifically, the aim is to develop salmonella and adenovirus-based recombinant RP and PPR vaccines which would be administered by the oral route. Their deliverable formulation will be made in a way which results in a heat- stable product. These should have the same characteristics in terms of immune response as the existing vaccines which provide life-long immunity. <P>

However, little is known about the mechanism whereby this long lasting immune response is induced. This issue will be addressed in this project. The results which will be obtained will help in the design of the new vaccines.<P> An additional objective is to better characterise strains of both RPV and PPRV isolated from wildlife. Indeed, preliminary experiments carried out by partner CR5 have demonstrated that the virus isolated from Kudu in 1995 is very mild in cattle. This result raises the question of whether this virus has been maintained undetected in unvaccinated cattle herds with wildlife having served as a sentinel because they are more sensitive to this strain. Experiments will be carried out to analyse the behaviour of this strain (along with a PPRV wildlife isolate) in order to understand the interactions between domestic animals and wildlife for the maintenance of RPV and PPRV in nature.