Vaccines as alternatives to antibiotics for food producing animals. Part 2: new approaches and potential solutions

Abstract

Vaccines and other alternative products are central to the future success of animal agriculture because they can help minimize the need for antibiotics by preventing and controlling infectious diseases in animal populations. To assess scientific advancements related to alternatives to antibiotics and provide actionable strategies to support their development, the United States Department of Agriculture, with support from the World Organisation for Animal Health, organized the second International Symposium on Alternatives to Antibiotics. It focused on six key areas: vaccines; microbial-derived products; non-nutritive phytochemicals; immune-related products; chemicals, enzymes, and innovative drugs; and regulatory pathways to enable the development and licensure of alternatives to antibiotics. This article, the second part in a two-part series, highlights new approaches and potential solutions for the development of vaccines as alternatives to antibiotics in food producing animals; opportunities, challenges and needs for the development of such vaccines are discussed in the first part of this series. As discussed in part 1 of this manuscript, many current vaccines fall short of ideal vaccines in one or more respects. Promising breakthroughs to overcome these limitations include new biotechnology techniques, new oral vaccine approaches, novel adjuvants, new delivery strategies based on bacterial spores, and live recombinant vectors; they also include new vaccination strategies in-ovo, and strategies that simultaneously protect against multiple pathogens. However, translating this research into commercial vaccines that effectively reduce the need for antibiotics will require close collaboration among stakeholders, for instance through public–private partnerships. Targeted research and development investments and concerted efforts by all affected are needed to realize the potential of vaccines to improve animal health, safeguard agricultural productivity, and reduce antibiotic consumption and resulting resistance risks.

Vaccines the tugboat for prevention-based animal production

“…The objective of "one health" is to promote multisectoral response to food safety hazards, the risk from zoonotic diseases and its control (disease that can spread between animals and humans, e.g., rabies, West Nile fever, salmonella, and flu) (Vandersmissen and Welburn, 2014;Buttigieg, 2015). One health activity also includes public health threats at the human-animalecosystem interface (antibiotic resistance) and provides guidance on how to reduce these risks (Vandersmissen and Welburn, 2014;Hoelzer et al, 2018).…”

“…There are limited numbers of effective antibiotics for treatment against bacterial diseases but the possibilities of getting resistant against these are still a concern. Vaccine acts on the bacteria by eliciting host-immune response either through humoral or cellmediated immunity and there is no possibility to get resistance against host immunity (Vandersmissen and Welburn, 2014;Hoelzer et al, 2018). Therefore vaccination is a safe and effective method to prevent bacterial infection in animals and humans.…”

Targeting virulence factors as an antimicrobial approach: Pigment inhibitors

“…Fortunately, “indirect” antimicrobial strategies have resulted in remarkable progress during the current decade. Antimicrobial biotherapy is one representative way to move forward with the treatment of biological macromolecules, such as antibodies, vaccines, and even living organisms . In this way, one popular approach being explored is the use of pathogen‐specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to prevent infections or to treat infections adjunctively with antibiotics .…”

A pan genome reverse vaccinology approach to prevent Streptococcus agalactiae infection in farmed tilapia

“…To develop effective vaccines against the pathogens with broad diversities, autogenous vaccines, which are custom vaccines prepared from the pathogens isolated directly from the farm and applied only on the farm, could be one of the solutions to control diseases in warm water fish aquacultures (Hoelzer et al, 2018;Millard et al, 2012;Toranzo et al, 2009).…”

“…achromogenes and Yersinia ruckeri in salmonid fish (Barnes et al, 2016;Gudmundsdóttir et al, 1997;Ormsby et al, 2016) and against Streptococcus iniae in barramundi and GBS in stingrays Millard et al, 2012). Autogenous vaccines are also known as emergency vaccine, which can be used under the circumstances where fully licensed vaccines are not available, not effective or the causative agent is not covered (Hoelzer et al, 2018). The process of developing autogenous vaccines is much shorter than developing generic vaccines so the vaccine could be very effective against pathogens like Streptococcus that evolve rapidly because even emerging novel serotypes can be incorporated in a short period of time.…”