Cuba

Capacity-building for genomic approaches to animal vaccine development in Cuba

Le sommaire ci-dessous est présenté dans la langue de la demande soumis par les demandeurs du concours SCR-CALA.

Infectious diseases are the leading cause of animal suffering worldwide and the single most important impediment to profitable and sustainable animal production. Traditional approaches to the control of bacterial diseases in livestock and poultry rely heavily on mass medication with antibiotics; a practice that we now know is not sustainable and can lead to problems in the human healthcare sector through the selection of antibiotic resistant pathogens. The practice of vaccination is a viable alternative, but has not reached its full potential in the poultry sector.

Researchers at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac), University of Saskatchewan and the National Centre for Animal and Plant Health (CENSA) in Cuba have decided to establish a collaborative effort to utilize genomic technologies for poultry vaccine development, an approach termed “vaccinomics”. They will target Mycoplasma gallisepticum, an important pathogen of virtually all domestic poultry species and one that limits production in many parts of the world, including Latin America. In order to set up this collaboration, we are proposing to hold two workshops, one in Havana and the second in Saskatoon for three participants from each institution. The Saskatoon visit will also include a trip to Simon Fraser University for the Cuban bioinformatics researchers to meet with Fiona Brinkman, one of Canada’s leading experts in the field. At the conclusion of the two workshops, we expect to have a detailed plan established for the collaboration and also funding sources identified from sources in Canada, Cuba and internationally.