Agricultural
18 October, 2022
Vaccine research targets lumpy skin disease
Scientists at the University of Queensland are developing a protein-based vaccine to protect Australia’s beef industry from lumpy skin disease (LSD) and is aiming for a single dose vaccine for the highly contagious viral disease which causes scabby skin nodules and swelling in cattle and buffalo.
Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) Centre for Animal Science Professor Tim Mahony said Australia is currently LSD free and an outbreak would have severe economic and animal welfare consequences.
“It is arguably more of a risk to Australia than Foot and Mouth disease because it is spread by insects and ticks and the wind could blow a carrier ashore anyway along the northern coast,” Prof. Mahony said.
“Over the last few years LSD has spread through China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia to reach the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra just months ago.
“Our goal is to develop a vaccine which could be used if there were an outbreak to help contain the virus and avoid the need for livestock to be culled.
“Existing vaccines for LSD are modified live vaccines that come with risks including the potential for reversion back to the disease causing form of the virus and international trading partners rejecting vaccinated animals.”
Prof. Mahony’s team hopes to have a prototype protein based vaccine ready for testing by the end of this year.
It will be based on a single dose cattle tick vaccine developed by QAAFI a few years ago in collaboration with Swinburne University of Technology with support from the CRC for Polymer and the Queensland Government.
Protein-based vaccines are safe and effective in controlling diseases and are generally acceptable to importers of cattle and beef products.
“Like the current Covid 19 immunisations, there is no single dose mRNA vaccine and where mustering and the weather are complex, multi dose technologies for cattle are not user friendly,” Prof. Mahony said.
“There’s also difficulty differentiating between infected and vaccinated animals so we’ve designed what we think is a novel antigen that will only initiate immune responses in vaccinated animals.
“This could accelerate return to disease free status for trading after an outbreak.”
At the same time, DAF scientists, led by Dr Beth Fowler, are working on in-field diagnostics, similar to Covid-19 RAT tests, to enable biosecurity authorities to start control methods as soon as possible if an outbreak is detected.
“There are no simple, portable on-farm tests or tools available for rapid field diagnosis of LSD,” Dr Fowler said.
