Scientists hope to produce vaccine by end of five-year project

Leading research scientists have said they are confident a vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) will be produced in the next five years.

Researchers from the Pirbright Institute and the universities of St Andrews, Leeds, Edinburgh and Dundee are working on a five-year project to form an effective vaccine for FMD type-O - the serotype that caused the 2001 UK outbreak.

The project, which hopes for a vaccine with improved responses, reduced need for revaccination, and eventually the development of a weapon against all known strains of the disease, has been part-funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Terry Jackson, team leader on the FMD project at Pirbright, said: "The significant thing is that the universities can use sub-genomic replicons. These replicons don't produce infectious virus, so they are perfectly safe to work on outside of our containment facility. The universities now have permission to use them and at the end of this we would be very disappointed if we did not have a vaccine using the live unattenuated virus."

The 2001 FMD virus outbreak lead to the deaths of seven million sheep and cattle, and was estimated to have cost the British economy around £8b.

Dr Jackson added: "Success would be massive. A lot of people who work at Pirbright would love to leave a legacy; we would love to leave behind something and say we made a difference."