New Livestock Infectious Diseases Antigens

Background

Intensive animal farming creates conditions for the emergence and amplification of epidemics. The social costs induced by animal infectious diseases can be significant, as the COVID-19 pandemic shows. Some of the pathogens pose a real risk to a serious shortage of food in many parts of the world. In 2018, African swine fever virus (ASFV) spread to Asia, affecting more than 10 percent of the total pig population in several countries, leading to severe economic losses in the pig sector. Control of livestock pathogens is very important component of efficient food production. The research of veterinary infectious diseases focuses on infectious-disease-causing pathogens, epidemiology, diagnostic methods, molecular evolution, immune responses, treatment and prevention.

Fig. 1 Geographic distribution of disease agents (Wiethoelter AK, et al. 2015)

The global veterinary diagnostics market was valued at USD 6.2 billion in 2020, and it is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.5% from 2021 to 2028. The growth of this market is attributed to factors such as animal health expenditure, the increase in the incidence of zoonotic diseases, the number of veterinarians, technological advancement in point of care diagnostics, and the level of disposable income in developing regions. In terms of disease type, veterinary infectious diseases have the greatest impact on market size. Combined with diagnosis, the delivery of effective vaccine strategies for the control of major pathogens of livestock will be especially testing and a continuum of new and better vaccines able to deliver more long-lasting and durable protective immunity and to be effective against multiple strains or variants will be essential. Researchers need to understand more about key issues of the biology of pathogens, such as predictions of the virulence and spread of virus under different circumstances, immunological mechanisms of protection against disease and virus replication and how to generate longer-lasting protective immunity after vaccination, the drivers of virus evolution and ways to improve vaccine stability and generate protection to multiple serotypes.