Taiwan News reports that researchers have achieved a preliminary breakthrough in their effort to develop a vaccine against major infectious poultry diseases, with the completion of the construction of a recombinant fowl pox virus vector that will help in the development of a three-in-one poultry vaccine.

The National Science Council (NSC) has announced the breakthrough in its agricultural biotech development project.

Professor Lee Lung-hu at National Chung Hsing University's Department of Veterinary Medicine, who heads the research team, predicted that combination vaccines for poultry would become the trend, as too many different kinds of vaccines can adversely affect the health of fowl.

Diseases like avian influenza, fowl pox, Newcastle disease and infectious bursal disease can all seriously hurt poultry farm business, he said. If success could be achieved in the efforts to develop and mass produce the three-in-one vaccine against fowl pox, Newcastle disease and infectious bursal disease, it would help chicken farmers to save costs, he added.

Professor Lee's employed gene engineering techniques: he used the fowl pox virus as a vector to develop a vaccine against bursal disease. The next step will be to test the vaccine at chicken farms, he said.