"Shipping Fever" is the main cause of illness/death in beef cattle in North America, resulting in $500 million/year of losses due to treatment costs, poor weight gain, reduced carcass value and death. Mannheimia haemolytica bacteria causes the most serious form of shipping fever, causing severe, often fatal pneumonia. Because currently available haemolytica vaccines are not effective enough, the most common treatment is aggressive antibiotic therapy of sick animals and antibiotic treatment of all cattle upon arrival at feedlots. Yet, despite advances in the understanding of shipping fever, conventional animal vaccine technology and new antibiotics over the last 40 years, the percentage of cattle developing shipping fever and the number that die from the disease have remained relatively unchanged. Overuse of antibiotics has several serious drawbacks: 1) animal value is reduced, 2) multi-drug resistance against haemolytica is increased, and 3) it poses a risk of "crossover" of antibiotic-resistant bacteria from cattle to humans. These antibiotic challenges highlight the need to develop next-generation vaccines so that antibiotic use can be reduced. SolidTech plans to develop the needed innovative vaccine to help prevent M. haemolytica infections in cattle. SolidTech's animal vaccine approach utilizes bacterial outer membrane vesicles (OMV) as the primary source of vaccine ingredients. This is a proven technology used to manufacture inexpensive, effective bacterial meningitis vaccines for humans. The project begins with the selection of an appropriate M. haemolytica strain followed by creating optimum laboratory growth conditions to maximize OMV production and by obtaining regulatory concurrence by the USDA-Center for Veterinary Biologics (USDA-CVB). Phase I proof-of-concept studies include testing prototype vaccine(s) in an established mouse serologic (antibody) model. Anticipated successful achievement of Phase I objectives will set the stage for a larger Phase II project in which candidate test vaccine(s) will be produced for efficacy studies in cattle leading to the licensing of a more effective vaccine against cattle shipping fever. This accomplishment would enable reduced usage of preventive and therapeutic antibiotics in cattle and can greatly improve production of high-quality, reasonably priced beef to help feed people domestically and abroad. Furthermore, the technology is directly applicable to other diseases affecting cattle and other domestic production animals.
