The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR), South Dakota State University and the US Poultry & Egg Association (USPOULTRY) are putting US$250,000 into research on avian metapneumovirus (aMPV). The virus is highly contagious and causes respiratory disease in chickens and turkeys.
According to FFAR, the money comes through its Rapid Outcomes from Agricultural Research program. It will pay for two things: checking how well imported vaccines protect against US strains of the virus and moving forward a new vaccine based on a US strain.
Questions over imported vaccines
FFAR says aMPV subtypes A and B appeared in the US in late 2023 and early 2024. They spread quickly across poultry-producing states and caused significant economic losses.
In response, the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Center for Veterinary Biologics gave conditional approval to imported vaccines based on European virus strains. These are live attenuated vaccines, meaning they use a weakened form of the live virus. After about a year of use, producers and researchers have questioned how well they protect against the genetically distinct strains circulating in the US.
Sunil Mor, assistant professor of animal disease research at South Dakota State University, is leading the work. The university is in Brookings, in the upper Midwest state. His team will test the imported vaccines against US subtypes A and B in both chickens and turkeys. The studies will also compare practical ways to give the vaccines, including spray, oral delivery and eye drops.
"We urgently need to evaluate the efficacy of conditionally approved imported vaccines and their proper application," Mor said.
The results are meant to give producers data to guide how they use vaccines while longer-term work continues.
Domestic vaccine candidate
The team has already developed a live attenuated vaccine candidate from an aMPV-B strain isolated on a US poultry farm. According to FFAR, the candidate is more than 99% genetically identical to the aMPV-B strains found on US poultry farms so far.
Earlier studies funded by FFAR showed promising safety, protection and genetic stability for the candidate in chickens and turkeys.
Jasmine Bruno, scientific program director at FFAR, said the research meets the immediate need to understand how existing vaccines perform. She said it also advances a possible US-based option for more effective disease control over the longer term.
FFAR was created under the 2014 Farm Bill to increase public investment in agricultural research. It matches federal funding from Congress with private funding.
