Stem cell study aids efforts to tackle African Swine Fever

A £1.6m study will aim to define factors linked to susceptibility and resistance to African Swine Fever in domestic and wild pigs.

Researchers will use stem cell technology developed at the Roslin Institute to try to understand how African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV) can cause fatal disease in domestic pigs but does not affect wild African pig species, such as red river hogs or warthogs. 

Their approach forms part of a collaborative project to better understand and mitigate ASFV, which affects farmed animal welfare and causes extensive economic losses.

The stem cell platform will be used to generate pig, warthog and red river hog immune cells – the primary cellular target of the virus – which can be exposed to virus, to enable scientists to examine the cells’ response to infection in various species, and identify genes involved in this. 

Control of African swine fever is limited to slaughter and quarantine of infected animals due to the lack of a safe and effective vaccine, which causes major economic losses.

The three-year project ultimately aims to identify key genetic factors underpinning resistance and resilience to ASFV through comparative analysis of domestic pigs versus the wild African pig, focusing on the innate immune response.

The findings could inform breeding of animals with greater resistance to infection.

The project is a collaboration involving the Pirbright Institute, the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) in France, and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Spain.

It is part-funded by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) through the EU Partnership on Animal Health and Welfare (EUPAHW).

Image credit: Thibaut Tiberghien and Unsplash