IAH hosts Veterinary Research Club prize talks
A talented early career researcher was awarded the Walter and Dorothy Plowright Young Researchers Prize for veterinary research on Friday (27 April 2012) during the 425th meeting of the Veterinary Research Club in Pirbright at the Institute for Animal Health.
The prize is named after Dr Walter Plowright FRS and his widow, Dorothy. Dr Plowright was Head of Microbiology at the Institute for Animal Health’s Compton Laboratory from 1978 to 1983 and has been widely celebrated for his work to develop a vaccine that contributed to the global eradication of rinderpest. The international Food and Agriculture Organisation awarded a medal to the Institute in 2011 for the contribution of IAH science, including that of Dr Plowright, to stamping out rinderpest across the globe.
Leonard Both was awarded the prize of £150 for his talk entitled “‘Of dogs and men’: Novel post exposure tools for Rabies virus infection”, which impressed a panel of judges selected from the top echelons of the UK’s veterinary research community. Mr Both is studying for a PhD at St George’s University of London, which is jointly funded and coordinated by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency and St George’s.
*Picture: Peter Stevenson and Leonard Both.
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Feature: Bioimaging at IAH
Enlightenment Science in the 21st Century – Bioimaging comes into its own
When microscopy had its first heyday in the 17th Century, it opened up a new world of cells, plant structures and the complexity of human physiology; the microscope led the discoveries and sparked a revolution in science. Now is the time that bioimaging is having, perhaps, a second bite at the Enlightenment cherry. Where, in the past, we have relied on biochemistry, biophysics and cell biology to answer questions about the lifecycles of viruses, we are now in a position to go directly to an animal cell and look inside at what is happening in powerful detail.
The Institute is unique in the UK as a facility where the most serious viruses affecting farm animals can be studied both in the lab and in the animals. This enables a holistic approach to interrogating the route of transmission, infection and propagation of viruses (including foot-and-mouth disease virus, Marek’s diseases virus, bluetongue virus as well as African swine fever virus and many more besides). Bioimaging is a core facility with collaborations across all three of the Institute's research programmes enabling both fundamental and applied research as well as driving research in its own right.
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FMD vaccination by design using DNA
Researchers at the Institute for Animal Health have examined a new type of vaccination regime that protects cattle against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). This regime features the use of a DNA vaccine approach and the experimental results show that such vaccines have the potential, with further development, to protect against this important disease. Such vaccines do not require high containment facilities for production, making them easier to design and cheaper to produce than current vaccines against FMD. The research was published last week in Antiviral Research.
Dr Paul Barnett, who led the research, said “This is the first time this type of DNA vaccination regime has been shown to be effective in protecting cattle. We were confident that this would be possible as we have already shown, in collaboration with European partners, that a DNA based vaccine that includes an additional protein to boost its effectiveness can protect pigs against FMD and even without the additional protein boost can prevent sheep from being infected.
“The next challenge for us will be to remove the reliance on this protein boost in cattle so that we have an alternative vaccine that fully lives up to the potential that the DNA approach can offer.”
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