Development of safe and efficacious bluetongue virus vaccines

Abstract

Bluetongue virus (BTV) infection results in an agriculturally important disease of livestock. Traditionally BTV outbreaks were controlled by the use of attenuated live virus vaccines. However recent BTV outbreaks in Europe had been controlled by killed virus vaccine. These vaccines are not DIVA-compliant (unable to differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals). This review summarises the current efforts in development of DIVA-compliant subunit vaccines, with emphasis of virus-like particles as improved bluetongue vaccines. Although current commercial vaccines that have been used to control virus spread in Europe are mainly based on inactivated viruses, these are not DIVA compliant. Thus, this has lead to many new approaches in order to develop a DIVA-compliant vaccine with accompanying tests. This review describes the different technologies, with emphasis of virus-like particles as improved bluetongue vaccines.