Synthetic vaccine could prevent future outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease

[Fantastic Anarchist]

Synthetic vaccine could prevent future outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease
Technique could be extended to human viruses and help with eradication of polio.

Zoe Cormier
28 March 2013

A new vaccine consists of synthetically produced empty shells of the foot-and-mouth disease virus, seen here in a computer model.

Virologists have devised a way to create an entirely synthetic vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease. The vaccine could prevent future outbreaks of the disease, and potentially lead to new treatments for polio and other human diseases.

Bryan Charleston, head of the Livestock Viral Diseases Programme at the Pirbright Institute in Woking, UK, and his colleagues used computer simulations to create a model of the protein shell of the virus that causes the disease, then reconstructed it from synthetic protein components. The synthetic shell contains no genetic material, and so it cannot infect the animals. But it will spur the immune system to produce antibodies that would protect them from the real virus.

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[qazplm]

1. Sadly, a cure for Foot In Mouth Disease remains elusive

Boom.