Synthetic peptide-based serosurveillance and vaccine system for FMD

Introduction We have designed a synthetic peptide-based system for the control of FMD, having synthetic peptide-based NS immunoassays and peptide-based marker vaccines. The UBI system for FMD has two indirect ELISAs for screening animals based on 3B nonstructural protein (NS) synthetic antigen, for detection of animals that may be carrying infectious virus and for differentiation of exposed from vaccinated animals (the UBI FMDV NS EIA SWINE and CATTLE) [1,2]. The addition to the UBI system of two peptide-based confirmatory tests, a 3B NS blocking ELISA (the UBIFMDV NS 3B Neutralization Assay) and a 3A NS indirect ELISA (the UBI NS 3A EIA) is reported here. We report on the initial validation studies of these tests and on a large-scale field trial showing the overall performance of the UBI NS immunosurveillance system that includes the 3B screening test and the two confirmatory immunoassays.