Effective herd specific vaccine against Staphylococcus aureus bovine mastitis

Important results from the project

The purpose is to develop a process for manufacturing of autogenous efficacious Staphylococcus aureus (SA) vaccines. Four publications have shown that the unique adjuvant induce strong immune responses. All vital parts of the process to create an autogenous SA vaccine from identification of the mastitis until the vaccination is established and will be verified in the next step. The short term purpose is to identify and develop a process that is effective for treatment prophylaxis of mastitis, thus avoiding unnecessary costs, over-use of antibiotics and development of resistance.

Expected long term effects

The project has identified virulence factors essential to selecting SA components inducing immune protection, a process for designing, manufacturing SA-vaccine and vaccination of bovine herds with an autogenous SA vaccine. We expect a protective SA mastitis vaccine. With this knowledge the autogenous vaccination strategy can be scaled up and be performed more extensively and thus reducing the development of SA-mastitis. The antigen strategy increases the potential for efficacious autogenous SA vaccines and for a future registered SA vaccine.

Approach and implementation

The plan was to start the vaccination of the bovine herd within the timeframe of the project but due to delay related to access to adjuvant, clearing the regulatory process for approval of autogenous vaccines with the MPA. The characterization of the bacterial strains from the selected dairy herd, the formulation and production of the vaccine is now in secured. The experimental vaccination is planned to start in Q4 2018. All together the performance of the activities and the results obtained within the project so far has been very encouraging and the project will be moving on.