WIREDGOV

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) affects all cloven-hoofed animals, both domesticated and wild, and is one of the most contagious of animal diseases. Its threat grows every year with increasing trade in animals and animal products, and of course through growing global tourism.

FMD is a huge concern for food producers, national governments and international organisations. The World Organisation for Animal Health (link opens in a new window) says FMD costs farmers more than £3 billion each year, while outbreaks are much worse: the 2001 outbreak is estimated to have cost the UK almost £20 billion, while Taiwan suffered a £10 billion hit in 1997.

And simply because a country is currently FMD-free doesn’t rule out a future imported outbreak.

So the news today that scientists using the Diamond Light Source have developed a new methodology to produce an FMD vaccine will likely be global news. The new vaccine is completely synthetic - made up of tiny protein shells designed to trigger optimum immune response. It doesn’t therefore rely on growing live infectious virus and is therefore much safer to produce – potentially significantly boosting its usefulness for farmers in the developing world.

The technique pioneered at Diamond could also impact on how viruses from the same family are fought, including polio.

Professor John Womersley, Chief Executive of STFC, which funds 86% of the Diamond Light Source said: "The team at Diamond are carrying out innovative, world-leading work into the atomic level structure of this dangerous virus. It is incredibly pleasing to see this lead to a breakthrough in developing a safe way to fight it. This work on livestock viruses could also lead, one day, to a more effective way of developing vaccines to fight human diseases."

The research was carried out by a UK partnership between The Pirbright Institute (link opens in a new window), which receives strategic funding from BBSRC (link opens in a new window) and grant funding to research FMDV, and the Diamond Light Source (link opens in a new window), the UK’s national synchrotron facility, which receives funding from STFC and the Wellcome Trust (link opens in a new window), along with the Universities of Oxford (link opens in a new window) and Reading (link opens in a new window). As well as vaccine development, Pirbright is a centre of excellence for foot-and-mouth diagnostics and is home to the World Reference Laboratory for FMDV virus.

For full details of the research, see the Diamond website (link opens in a new window).