Gene editing to eradicate ASF? Startup trials show promise

While everyone else was focused on a vaccine, a biotech startup turned to modern technology to stop African swine fever. Now one of the world's leading experts hopes to help commercialize it.

Crispr Gene Editing
digitalista | BigStock.com

Over the past five years, researchers have tested a host of vaccine technologies against African swine fever (ASF) — from the traditional attenuation technique to attempts to create vaccines from other viruses hybridized with ASF and efforts to build vaccines from segments of DNA. So far there's been little progress. Although the Vietnamese government approved two vaccines based on research from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Plum Island in 2023, experts suspect the virus has already mutated to evade these vaccines.

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