Roadmap for the development of candidate vaccines for FMD

What are we trying to achieve and why? What is the problem we are trying to solve?

Characterising the host’s responses to natural infection to help define how the pathogen evades or suppresses the
protective responses.

What are the scientific and technological challenges (knowledge gaps needing to be addressed)?

Identify the mechanisms responsible for animal survival following infection, including the mechanisms involved in the natural response to infection (innate immunity).

What approaches could/should be taken to address the research question?

• Perform studies in the different hosts
• Perform studies on natural survivors
• Investigate the role of persistent infection and carriers in FMD perpetuation in natural environments.

What else needs to be done before we can solve this need?

Improve understanding of the host pathogen interaction including persistence versus clearance

Existing knowledge including successes and failures

Natural infections in the field are always very different than experimental results obtained in controlled environment with clone-derived viruses from the laboratory. Host response to natural infection should be further investigated.