About us
This project focuses on the issue of vaccination of domestic chicken against important infectious diseases in poultry.
In the first case, the infection is caused by the protozoan parasite of the genus Eimeria (specifically Eimeria tenella and Eimeria maxima) causing the disease coccidiosis, the clinical outbreak of which has a significant impact on the poultry industry. Furthermore, the project aims to develop a recombinant antigen transfer vector based on HVT virus to facilitate vaccination of poultry against a wider range of diseases (e.g. infectious bursitis, Newcastle disease or Marek's disease).
The main objectives are to streamline key processes within the current production of attenuated vaccines and to upgrade it, including the replacement of the carcinogenic potassium dichromate for Eimeria maxima sporulation used in the production of the working inoculum of the chicken coccidiosis vaccine with a suitable sporulation medium (Objective 1); designing a method for the diagnosis of attenuated and virulent Eimeria strains using tools used in proteome and genome analysis (Objective 2); using new molecular genetics methods to prepare a recombinant HVT-based viral carrier (Objective 3), which would be a suitable addition to our production programme as a supplier of vaccines against infectious diseases in poultry.
