Australia helps develop world-first vaccine against devastating virus

3 months ago 16

Scientists have developed a world-first mRNA vaccine in NSW that protects cows against foot-and-mouth disease, a virus that would devastate Australia’s beef exports and wipe $80 billion from the economy if a widespread breakout struck.

The announcement of the $2.5 million vaccine comes after beef biosecurity was thrust into the spotlight last month when the government scrapped a ban on cow meat imports from the US.

NSW scientists have developed a world-first RNA vaccine for foot and mouth disease. Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty and Dr Peter Kirkland at the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute.

Infected cattle suffer blisters to their mouths, hooves and skin, robbing cows of their ability to eat or walk.

“Just the cost of managing the number of sick animals will be huge because it’s extremely infectious. It spreads really quickly,” said Dr Michael Laurence from the Meat and Livestock Association, which co-funded the research alongside the NSW government.

“No cow in a herd will be unaffected if there’s an outbreak. That’s why it’s so scary.”

Australia has access to a vaccine manufactured overseas. An mRNA vaccine could be made in NSW and, unlike conventional vaccines, its production never involves parts of the actual virus.

The UK’s foot and mouth outbreak in 2001 cost at least $16 billion.

A lab leak from a vaccine manufacturing facility or research centre was the probable cause of a 2007 breakout of the disease in the UK.

That breakout wasn’t as catastrophic as the 2001 UK outbreak, which forced the slaughter of 6 million cows and sheep and cost £8 billion ($16.4 billion) but still caused 2160 animal deaths and a weeks-long export ban on UK meat products.

In a sign of how seriously governments treat the risk of foot-and-mouth, scores of cattle carcasses were buried on a research farm this year in Victoria as part of preparations for a potential outbreak.

The cows died of toxic weed poisoning, not disease, but the trial is testing how best to compost and decontaminate dead cows should foot-and-mouth strike.

Pits were dug at a research farm in Victoria to test how dead cattle may be disposed of.

An mRNA vaccine could roll out within weeks of an outbreak, potentially saving herds from large-scale culling.

The vaccines also provide something called DIVA capacity (differentiating infected from vaccinated animals), which allows responders to test which animals were vaccinated and which were naturally infected, helping to more precisely define the scale of an outbreak.

“That may be something that speeds up a return to international trade after an incursion,” Laurence said.

Foot-and-mouth disease has been eradicated from Australia for more than a century. America is also free from the disease, although some have raised concerns infected meat could be imported into the US from risky countries, processed and then sent to Australia.

“I’m not convinced that the potential for importing beef from the US exposes us more to risk, but the fact is that we’ve now got foot-and-mouth, and lumpy skin disease, on our doorstep in Indonesia. So the risk of an incursion has actually gone up,” Laurence said.

The vaccines use stands of “messenger RNA” or mRNA that code for small viral proteins. When the mRNA is introduced to the body, muscle cells make the protein, which triggers the production of antibodies ready to attack the actual virus upon infection.

The mRNA breaks down naturally in the body.

“It’s simply an instruction set that we send to the body to ask the immune system to prepare a defence for a particular disease,” Peter McGrath from Tiba Biotech, the US-based company that developed the vaccine, said. “So it’s actually the simplest and safest way to make a vaccine of any technology currently available.”

The vaccines last for a year in the fridge, or a month at room temperature, unlike early COVID-19 mRNA vaccines which had to be stored at sub-zero temperatures.

An Indonesian Agriculture Ministry official prepares to use a blowgun to administer a vaccine to a cow at a farm in Bali during a 2022 outbreak.

In a trial of nine vaccinated cows exposed to the virus in Germany, none contracted the disease or shed the virus. “That’s never been achieved anywhere in the world before,” said Dr Peter Kirkland, from the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute, which helped test and develop the vaccine.

The vaccine could be made and distributed very quickly with the right setup, Kirkland, a NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development scientist, said. “You could actually roll out this vaccine potentially within a week of an outbreak starting.”

The UNSW RNA Institute is working on the capability to manufacture the vaccine, he said. The Sydney institute is part of a newly announced $17.6 million RNA Research and Training Network, which aims to boost the RNA workforce in NSW.

Moderna’s new taxpayer-funded mRNA factory in Melbourne rejected the NSW government’s request to make the new vaccine, which still requires registration from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority.

“Developing local capacity to produce vaccines against emergency animal diseases is a critical priority for the NSW Government, Australia’s livestock industries and our economy,” Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said.

“If these diseases were to enter the country it would cause major disruptions to the livestock industry and catastrophic market impacts across rural Australia.”

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