AhmedabadThere’s good news for vets and veterinarians struggling to prevent lumpy skin disease. the outbreak cattle in states such as Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab, among others.
Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) scientists told ThePrint that an indigenous vaccine against the disease, which was in development since 2019 – using viral samples isolated from Ranchi, has successfully completed field trials and is now on commercial launch. ready for.
In a huge success, two institutes of ICAR have done advanced The vaccine, called Lumpi-ProVac, which the central government is now planning to commercialize at the earliest to control the killed outbreak. thousands Number of cattle in many Indian states in the last one month or so.
In a telephonic conversation with ThePrint, Dr. Naveen Kumar – a researcher at the ICAR National Research Center on Equines in Haryana, who led the vaccine trial, Explained how the vaccine was developed in the last three years.
“I first isolated the virus from Ranchi in 2019,” Kumar told ThePrint.
He added: “Since then, we have been working to understand the virus and develop a vaccine.”
Caused by caprypox virus, lumpy skin disease – which affects both cows and buffalo – gets its name from the large, firm nodules that develop on the skin of cattle as a result of the disease. Depression, conjunctivitis and excessive salivation are some of the other symptoms in diseased animals.
Eventually the knots burst, causing the animal to bleed. There is currently no cure for the viral disease, and treatment mostly targets the clinical symptoms.
Currently, the vaccine being used against this disease is the goat vaccine, which also provides some degree of protection against lumpy skin disease.
“But the efficacy is around 60 per cent. So we have developed a specific vaccine for lumpy skin disease. Field trials have shown that the vaccine is safe and effective,” Kumar said.
Developing Lumpy-Provac
Lumpi-ProVac is a live attenuated vaccine – which means it contains weakened strains of the lumpy skin disease virus.
To dilute the viral samples, the researchers conducted genetic engineering experiments, known as serial passing.
Serial passing is a process of growing a virus (or bacterium) in iterations, either to study the properties of a mutated virus, or to develop a strain with desired properties.
In this case, the researchers used Vero cells—derived from the kidney of an African green monkey—to develop 50 new generations of the virus. Each iteration takes about a week. Kumar said the entire process to arrive at the correct weak tension took a year and a half.
Before field trials were conducted, the vaccine was tested for safety on rats and rabbits.
“When the vaccine appeared safe in rats and rabbits, we decided to proceed with field testing,” he said.
Kumar said the first animal test was conducted between April and June this year on 15 calves in Mukteshwar (Uttarakhand). “The tests showed us that the vaccine was safe even for animals in the field,” he said.
This was followed by a randomized control trial in July in the dairy farms of Udaipur and Banswara (Rajasthan). About 700 cows, buffaloes and calves – including pregnant or lactating cows – were vaccinated.
Kumar said the results of these trials showed that the vaccine was not only safer, but was also more effective in preventing lumpy skin disease in cattle.
According to Kumar, a live attenuated vaccine has better efficacy and is effective for up to a year, unlike inactivated vaccines – such as the COVID vaccine Covaxin – which provide short-term protection against the disease.
Lumpi-ProVac is stored in freeze dried form, and needs to be stored at 4 °C.
Kumar said that ICAR will now invite expression of interest from pharmaceuticals for commercialization of the vaccine.
(Edited by Polomi Banerjee)
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