Basis of protective immunity and reversion to virulence of African swine fever virus

Knowledge of the immune mechanisms leading to a protective response, which are the basis for rational vaccine design, are still uncertain. The scientific and technological advances that constitute the ambition of this project focus on the generation of data and tools to understand ASFV virulence mechanisms and its relationship with the host immunity leading to a protective response. The innovation potential starts with the knowledge gained from the previous ICRAD consortium, IFNASF, identifying regulatory ASFV genes and virulence factors. In this project, recombinant ASFV lacking immunomodulatory genes (CSIC), or recombinant MVA encoding those genes (LMU), will be generated and tested in vitro to characterize their immune potential and hemoadsorbent ability, and in vivo (IZSUM) to analyze their virulence and potential protective ability. In order to understand the immune response involved in preventing ASFV infection, cutting-edge technology such as RNA-seq, combined with single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-Seq) (SVA) is planned. Finally, issues largely ignored but relevant to allow vaccines commercialization, such as the reversion to virulence of live attenuated vaccines, will be addressed.