Pig industry welcomes additional safeguards

The scientists will evaluate their novel DNA vaccine candidate at the CSIRO Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong, which is specifically designed to safely research into the world's most dangerous diseases.

Despite Australia never having an outbreak of ASF, it has recently spread through Asia and in Indonesia, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea.

Pork SA committee member Matthew Greenslade believed if a safe and effective vaccine was made available, it would most likely become common practice to implement an on-farm vaccine program.

"Never say never but we are lucky to not have a feral pig population in SA but the eastern states do. This is how the disease spreads because it gets into the wild population and then spreads to the domestic herd," he said.

"A power of work has gone into on-farm plans for an exotic disease outbreak and the vaccine will give producers another layer of protection. Exotic diseases are one of the biggest problems faced by the industry."

Mr Greenslade said despite the amount of industry work into disease protection, awareness about ASF was still crucial.

"It could be brought in by travellers and we need safeguards to ensure the Australian herd is protected," he said.

"So much work has been achieved with on-farm biosecurity but continuing to raise awareness about the disease by having actual practices in place will help strengthen SA producers' ability to respond to an outbreak."

ACDP ASF expert David Williams said despite the continued threat of ASF, scientists had not been able to develop a completely safe and effective vaccine.

"First-generation vaccines have been approved for use in some parts of Asia, these are weakened live virus vaccines, which have potential to revert back to a disease-causing form and can cause side effects in sows and pigs with infections or other illnesses," Dr Williams said.

"ACDP is one of the few labs in the world that can safely work with the virus. We will be bringing all our diagnostic tools, reagents and research capability to this challenge, and learning from the experience for future research."

With an estimated outbreak cost of $2 billion to the Australian economy, vaccine research was a crucial step for the future of the Australian pig herd and Australian Pork Limited chief executive officer Margo Andrae was pleased about the vaccine development.

"Any collaboration to develop an ASF vaccine marks a promising step in the right direction for the global pig industry," she said.

"I am optimistic about the potential but it is also essential to recognise vaccine research is a complex process, and if successful, commercial availability would likely be many years away."

Ms Andrae believed a commercially available ASF vaccine would provide additional safeguards in mitigating emergency animal disease risks for Australia's commercial pig herd.

US-based MBF Therapeutics CEO Thomas Tillet said the DNA vaccine platform was based on technology adapted from immunotherapeutic treatment of human cancer, and aimed to eliminate pathogens as they enter the body.

"MBF Therapeutics' ultimate goal is to create a vaccine which can be used safely in all stages of swine production, including sows, while preventing disease in individual animals and limiting transmission within the herd and environment," he said.

This collaboration is part of CSIRO's Immune Resilience Future Science Platform, which uses new and emerging technologies to accelerate a deeper understanding of immune systems.