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South Korean startup Pharos Vaccine Inc. said Thursday it may supply a homegrown vaccine against food and mouth disease next year as the country is grappling with the worst outbreak of the animal disease in seven years.
South Korea is suffering from a serious undersupply of FMD vaccines as the country is hit by the simultaneous outbreak of type A and type O viruses. Since the first outbreak on Feb. 5, nearly 800 cows have been culled so far, raising concerns that the animal disease is spreading nationwide.
Pharos Vaccine said it has succeeded in developing an FMD vaccine using the so-called recombinant protein technology and will be able to commercialize it as early as next year.
Unlike the existing method of using vaccine strains, the new technology harnesses proteins imitating FMD antigens, which boosts the stability of immunogens in the animal body and thus improves the level of immunity and the speed of an immune reaction, the company said.
The process is relatively safe because it doesn't use highly contagious vaccine strains, and its production cost is low as there is no need to install safety equipment, Pharos Vaccine added.
"The technology is basically safe as it doesn't rely on highly pathogenic viruses and enables researchers to cope with mutated viruses quickly," said Pharos Vaccine CEO Je Jeong-wook. "We will be able to unveil a locally developed FMD vaccine next year if the company receives active state support."
Currently, the South Korean government spends some 60 billion won ($52.6 million) per year to import FMD vaccines.
Should the government give the go-ahead for a clinical test, Pharos Vaccine plans to apply for state approval during the second half of this year after a near four-month test run, he stressed.
The vaccine startup said it has registered patents on the technology in South Korea, China, the United States and four other countries with several "challenge tests" already conducted in China.
Meanwhile, quarantine authorities have sought an emergency supply of an FMD vaccine from Britain after tests showed the latest outbreak results from a virus different from prior cases. South Korea has vaccines for the type O+A virus but only for about 1.9 million cows, not enough for the 2.8 million cows that require it, according to officials.
Four days after the first outbreak, the government raised the watch level to the highest, closing all livestock trading markets across the nation while instituting a movement ban on animals until Feb. 28.
It is the first time in seven years that the country issued the highest alert against the FMD virus. In 2010, nearly 3.5 million cows and pigs were culled in over six months following an outbreak of the disease, which affects cloven-hoofed animals, such as cows, sheep and pigs. South Korea reported its last outbreak of the disease on March 29 last year, which does not affect humans. (Yonhap)
