The Pirbright Institute has entered into a worldwide exclusive partnership with ECO Animal Health Ltd (ECO), a wholly owned subsidiary of ECO Animal Health Group plc, on two new projects to combat significant diseases of poultry.

The first project, led by Professor Venugopal Nair on the development of a novel vaccine for use in chickens, will use a Marek’s disease virus (MDV) vaccine to protect against multiple economically important poultry viruses – such as infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV), Newcastle disease virus (NDV) and infectious laryngotracheitis virus (ILTV) – using innovative technologies developed at Pirbright.

This combined (recombinant) vaccine will have the potential of inducing simultaneous protection against Marek’s disease as well as the other major diseases caused by IBDV, NDV and ILTV. As such it will be a major advance in controlling avian diseases that threaten avian health and sustainable poultry production in many parts of the world.

Professor Venu Nair OBE, Head of the Viral Oncogenesis group at Pirbright, said: “Working with ECO Animal Health group gives us the opportunity to translate some of these innovative technologies into products that can be applied in the field to bring real benefit to the poultry industry through more effective disease control.”

Marc Loomes, CEO of ECO Animal Health Group plc said, “The use of the Marek’s disease vector in this technology is a significant advancement over the herpesvirus of turkey (HVT)-based recombinant vector vaccines, with the potential of providing additional stronger protection for Marek’s disease as well as the other major three diseases. This will help widen the potential use of this vaccine in broilers and in breeding stock”.

The second project, jointly led by Professor Venugopal Nair and Dr Erica Bickerton, is to develop a novel biological product using a viral vector system expressing proteins that will aid in the protection of chickens against infectious bronchitis (IB).

Diseases like IB represent a huge threat to food security and the economy. Poultry is a vitally important food source, with about 44 billion chickens produced worldwide every year. It is estimated that every 10 percent reduction in IB incidence would be worth around £654 million to the global poultry industry, which underscores the need for new ways to combat the disease effectively.

The novel approach is expected to tackle the increasing diversity of the causative infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) strains and represents the application of innovative technologies for improved control of major avian diseases such as infectious bronchitis.

Dr Erica Bickerton, Head of the Coronaviruses group at Pirbright said: “The partnership between The Pirbright Institute and ECO offers us an excellent opportunity to further our understanding of IBV diversity and to develop new technologies to effectively protect chickens against this important poultry disease.”

Marc Loomes added: “The development of this novel technology represents a significant advance in the approach to controlling infectious bronchitis and would complement ECO’s existing portfolio for the control of diseases in poultry”.