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?

To generate organisms that are less virulent in terms of pathological changes that they cause and/or their ability to
modulate the host’s immune responses – rationally attenuated vaccine

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

• Ensure that the organisms are stable and can be produced in cell culture
• Ensure generation of a protective response

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

• Generation of infectious cDNA clones
• Generation and characterisation of a range of rationally attenuated organisms (using codon pair deoptimisation)
• Immune response to the attenuated organisms.

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

• Identity of virulence factors and their genes
• Identity of immunomodulators

Existing knowledge including successes and failures