A researcher with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine is confident a new approach to dealing with bacterial diarrhea in pigs can be applied to other pathogens. To assist in vaccine development researchers with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine have isolated two specific Brachyspira hyodysenteriae proteins that appear to be responsible for diarrhea in pigs. Dr. Matt Loewen, an Associate Professor in Veterinary Medical Biosciences with the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine, says scientists returned to first principles and looked specifically at what the bacteria produces and how the pig reacts to it to cause diarrhea.
Clip-Dr. Matt Loewen-Western College of Veterinary Medicine:
We hope that these two proteins will provide protection if they are strongly immunogenic and that they are a good antigen, that the pig can take those antigens and produce a response to them that prevents the bacteria from functioning. This concept of going back to first principles of what’s happening in the pig and what’s happening in the bacteria and knowing the very specific proteins and processes that are involved and then targeting very specific things in the bacteria to produce an immune response has been successful in other diseases, in particular for cholera in human vaccines.
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