Experiences with new generation vaccines against equine viral arteritis, West Nile disease and African horse sickness

• Published in: Vaccine 2007-07, Vol.25 (30), p.5577-5582
• Main Authors: MacLachlan, N. James, Balasuriya, Udeni B, Davis, Nancy L, Collier, Martha, Johnston, Robert E, Ferraro, Gregory L, Guthrie, Alan J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African Horse Sickness - immunology; African Horse Sickness - prevention & control; African horsesickness; Allergy and Immunology; Alphavirus; Animals; Applied microbiology; Arterivirus Infections - immunology; Arterivirus Infections - prevention & control; Arterivirus Infections - veterinary; Biological and medical sciences; Commercial markets; Deoxyribonucleic acid; Disease; DNA; Equine arteritis virus; Equine viral arteritis; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Genomes; Herpes viruses; Horse; Horse Diseases - immunology; Horse Diseases - prevention & control; Horses; Immunization; Infections; Microbiology; Proteins; Vaccines; Vaccines - immunology; Vaccines, antisera, therapeutical immunoglobulins and monoclonal antibodies (general aspects); Vaccines, Attenuated - immunology; Vaccines, Attenuated - therapeutic use; Vaccines, DNA - immunology; Vaccines, Subunit - immunology; Vaccines, Synthetic - immunology; Viral diseases; Viral infections; Viral Vaccines - immunology; Viral Vaccines - therapeutic use; West Nile; West Nile Fever - prevention & control; West Nile Fever - veterinary
• ISSN: 0264-410X; 1873-2518
• DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2006.12.058

Abstract Viral diseases constitute an ever growing threat to the horse industry worldwide because of the rapid movement of large numbers of horses for competition and breeding. A number of different types of vaccines are available for protective immunization of horses against viral diseases. Traditional inactivated and live-attenuated (modified live virus, MLV) virus vaccines remain popular and efficacious but recombinant vaccines are increasingly being developed and used, in part because of the perceived deficiencies of some existing products. New generation vaccines include MLVs with deletions and/or mutations of critical genes, subunit vaccines that incorporate immunogenic proteins (or portions thereof) or expression vectors that produce these proteins as immunogens, and DNA vaccines. New generation vaccines have been developed for several viral diseases of horses. We recently have developed an alphavirus replicon-vectored equine arteritis virus (EAV) vaccine, and evaluated a commercial canary pox virus-vectored vaccine for West Nile disease. The success of these new-generation vaccines has catalyzed efforts to develop improved vaccines for the prevention of African horse sickness, a disease of emerging global significance.