Bilateral BBSRC-FAPESP Research Grant: Dissecting Essential Roles of Chicken Interferon Stimulated Genes in the Pathobiology of Poultry Viruses

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Poultry sectors of the UK and Brazil are contributing significantly to the cheapest and the most accessible source of meat protein. The UK poultry industry is contributing around £4 billion to the national economy whereas Brazil is the largest producer of poultry and poultry products, after United States and China. Despite this high production, infectious diseases are a major hurdle in achieving increasing demands of poultry products, around the globe. The total losses caused by infectious disease are enormous. For example, only Marek's disease virus (MDV), a cancer-causing virus of poultry, accounts for £2 billion losses worldwide. Massive vaccines application remained major disease-controlling tool against viruses. Despite widespread vaccinations against viruses (e.g. 22 billion vaccine doses for MDV only per year), the threat from poultry diseases is on rise and highlights the gaps in our fundamental understanding of poultry responses against virus natural infections or in immunization (vaccines). Such gaps has left us indebted on the molecular mechanism of chicken's involvement in influenza zoonoses and as a result quarantine and slaughtering of infected birds, as only choice, cost the poultry industry billions of dollars. Interferons, produced following viral infection of avian cells, stimulate the expression of hundreds of genes (more than 350 in humans) called interferon stimulated genes (ISGs). Exploitation of these ISGs could potentially be applied in favour of vaccine production, better vaccination protocols and controlling infections. In this proposal, we will initially identify the nature and magnitude of chicken ISGs (chISGs) and study their effects against five avian viruses causing infections in poultry (chicken, duck, turkey) ranging from mild to severe in terms of clinical manifestation. These viruses are of immense commercial and zoonotic importance not only for UK and Brazil but also throughout the world. Using broad-range profiling systems, we will identify those chISGs in the chicken cells that inhibit or enhance virus infections. Once identified, the factors that enhance virus infection will be overexpressed in established chicken cell line and the ones that inhibit virus infection will be removed or silenced within chicken cells. This modified cell line will be used to increase the replication of viruses for both industrial vaccine production and laboratory scale virus isolation. Given the fact that the current global poultry vaccine market is high, even a ten-fold increase in virus yield, which is potentially achievable, would have significant impact on the cost for vaccine. Beside industrial relevance, this new proposal, to be carried out jointly between The Pirbright Institute, UK and the State University of Campinas, Brazil, is crucial to understand the mechanism by which viruses induce interferon system of the chicken, some of which will be applicable to other species such as duck or turkeys. Finally, the findings from the project will be very valuable in examining the ability of the chISGs to protect the chickens against viruses of both poultry importance and those that can switch from poultry to human.