US-UK BBSRC-NIFA Collab. Swine Immune Toolkit: Development of new immune reagents for swine health, vaccine and disease studies

猪在英国和美国被广泛作为食用动物饲养，并对两国经济做出了重大贡献。此外，它们在东南亚经济体中的重要性也日益增加。然而，传染病仍然是生猪生产商面临的一个主要问题：据最佳估计，仅在英国，每年因猪流感而造成的损失就可能在600万至1100万英镑之间。疫苗接种是控制传染病的关键因素，但可用于猪的疫苗相对较少，可为整个接种群体提供坚实，持久的保护。此外，许多最重要的传染病已经进化出避免正常免疫的方法。因此，了解自然感染和疫苗接种的免疫反应的基本机制对于设计具有长商业寿命的成功疫苗变得越来越重要。同样，猪也被广泛用于人类疾病的生物医学研究，因为它们在生理、体型、遗传和免疫力方面与人类非常接近。猪被用于研究的领域包括肥胖、心脏病和传染病。尽管猪的免疫系统非常重要，尽管我们已经开发了35年的工具和试剂来研究猪的免疫系统，但我们仍然远远落后于人类和小鼠的研究，因此我们无法研究一些新发现的免疫系统的工作方式。在有些情况下，这是因为尚未研制试剂，但在有些情况下，已研制的试剂因独家商业协定而丢失，或因为存放在一个地点，容易发生事故。我们建议确定可用试剂中的空白，并填补最重要的空白。这将通过在全世界范围内对从事猪研究的科学家进行游说来实现，我们已经开始了这一进程，并为我们提供了一份优先目标的初步清单。该项目将开发和验证这些试剂和其他已确定的试剂，并根据非排他性协议共享和商业化，以确保其持续可用性。

Pigs are widely reared as food animals in the UK and the US and contribute significantly to both economies. In addition, they are increasingly important in south-east asian economies. However, infectious disease is still a major problem for pig producers: best estimates suggest that the annual costs of swine influenza alone might be between £6-11M from an estimated 10 million pigs to slaughter in the UK alone. Vaccination is a key element in controlling infectious diseases, but relatively few of the vaccines available for pigs provide solid, long-lasting protection for the whole of the vaccinated population. In addition, many of the most important infectious diseases have evolved ways of avoiding normal immunity. Increasingly, therefore, understanding the fundamental mechanisms involved in the immune response to natural infection and to vaccination is becoming important for designing successful vaccines with long commercial lifespans. Similarly, pigs are widely used in biomedical research on human diseases, since they are very close to humans in physiology, size, genetics and immunity. Areas in which pigs are used in research include obesity, heart disease, and infectious diseases.Despite their importance, and despite work over 35 years on developing the tools and reagents to study the pig immune system, we are still a long way behind research in humans and mice, such that we are unable to study some of the newly identified ways in which the immune system works. In some cases this has been because reagents have not been developed, but in some cases the reagents which have been developed have been lost through exclusive commercial agreements or because they were held in a single site and vulnerable to accidents. We propose to identify the gaps in the available reagents and to fill the most important. This will be achieved by canvassing scientists working with pigs worldwide, a process which we have already begun and which has provided us with an initial list of priority targets. The project will develop and validate these reagents and others identified, and share and commercialise them under non-exclusive agreements in order to ensure their continued availability.