Farmscape for March 24, 2021

Researchers with VIDO-InterVac hope to have the first intrauterine vaccines to protect sows, gilts and their piglets from Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus ready to move to commercialization within the next year.
Scientists with the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan have shown the delivery of vaccines into the uterus along with the semen during artificial insemination to be an effective option for protecting sows and gilts and their piglets from disease.
Dr. Heather Wilson, a research scientist with VIDO-InterVac, says, after three trials, scientists have observed a good vaccine response, neutralizing antibodies in the colostrum and passive protection for the piglets from PEDv and now it's just a matter of playing with the adjuvants to get an even better response.

Clip-Dr. Heather Wilson-Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization:
We're really excited with the safety profiles for the intrauterine vaccines so far.
Piglets are being born healthy, we don't seem to have any negative effect on fertility, the sizes seem to be comparable to piglets born to the control gilts.
We're very excited with vaccine response so far and we just need to continue to try to make it even better.
I think what we're aiming for is to take one more year to really optimise our vaccine formulation and show that it's giving good passive protection to the piglets against PEDv and then we can start talking to commercial partners to move forward to commercialization.

Dr. Wilson says the results so far have been encouraging.
She says the goal is to provide 100 percent protection for the piglets keeping in mind that sperm function and fertility must not be compromised at all.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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