Iranian Scientists Produce Multipotent Foot-and-Mouth Vaccine
The vaccine inactivates the disease-causing virus with intense gamma radiation while maintaining the ability to stimulate humoral and cellular immune responses in the animal body.
The vaccine could produce a significant protective antibody titer when exposed to the live virus. In laboratory studies on animals like guinea pigs, and the field tests on a livestock farm in Markazi Province, the vaccine has shown successful performance alongside chemical vaccines.
Compared to the chemical method, which takes between 48 and 72 hours to inactivate the virus, the process takes less than an hour with the gamma irradiation method which does not leave any chemical residues in the final product.
Another advantage of the method is the preservation of the antigenic structure and the enhancement of the immune system response of the animal, because gamma radiation inactivates the virus by destroying its genome, without damaging its protein structure, which plays a role in stimulating the immune system. This is while in chemical methods, there is a possibility of damage to the antigenic structure of the virus.
In a relevant development in 2024, an Iranian researcher at the University of Tehran had also succeeded in producing a foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) diagnosis kit by using the CRISPR-Cas technology.
Vaccination and genetic diagnosis of viral diseases using RNA interference (RNAi) technology and CRISPR-Cas system, a case study of foot-and-mouth disease, is the title of the research project of Mohammad Reza Bakhtiarizadeh, a PhD graduate in genetics and animal breeding field and a faculty member of the University of Tehran.
“RNAi technology and the CRISPR-Cas system, which created a revolution in the field of genome editing, are two useful strategies to deal with the foot-and-mouth disease,” Bakhtiarizadeh said.
“Considering that in the near future this technology will be the basis of diagnostic kits, vaccination and genetic therapy in various fields such as medicine, veterinary medicine and agriculture, therefore, achieving this technology shows that Iran is a pioneer in the field of biotechnology,” he added.
“At present, production of diagnostic kit for this disease using CRISPR technology has been successfully achieved in the laboratory,” Bakhtiarizadeh said.
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