ILRI news

As the board of trustees of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) meets in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week, reviewing ILRI’s animal health research among other work, an ILRI vaccine project is highlighted in a new publication, DFID Research 2009–2010: Providing research evidence that enables poverty reduction. The UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation both support the Global Alliance in Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed), which works to convert existing or near-market technologies into livestock medicines and vaccines for use in developing countries. The notable success of this strategy in 2009, says DFID, is an East Coast fever vaccine produced by ILRI. East Coast fever is a tick-transmitted disease that kills one cow every 30 seconds in eastern, central and southern Africa, where it threatens some 25 million cattle in 11 countries and is now putting at risk a further 10 million animals in new regions, such as southern Sudan, where the disease has been spreading at a rate of more than 30 kilometres a year. The disease is a major cattle killer. In herds kept by the pastoralist Maasai, it kills 20–50% of all unvaccinated calves, which makes it difficult and often impossible for the herders to plan for the future or to improve their livestock enterprises. A vaccine for East Coast fever could save over a million cattle and up to £170 million a year in the 11 countries where the disease is now endemic. An experimental vaccine against East Coast fever, which makes use of live but weakened parasites, has existed for more than three decades, with batches mass produced in ILRI’s Nairobi laboratories. Although constrained by the need for a ‘cold chain’ to keep the ‘live’ vaccine viable, field use of this vaccine in Tanzania and elsewhere has proved it to be highly effective and in demand by poor livestock keepers, who are paying for the vaccine to keep their animals alive. GALVmed has worked with ILRI and private companies, such as VetAgro Tanzania Ltd., to make East Coast fever vaccine available to the livestock keepers who need it most and to scale up production in future. With £16.5 million provided by DFID and the BMGF, GALVmed began working on the registration and commercial distribution and delivery of a new batch of the vaccine produced by ILRI. The vaccine was successfully registered in 2009 in Malawi and Kenya, with Tanzania and Uganda expected to follow soon. If it is approved in Uganda, it will be the first veterinary vaccine formally registered in that country. GALVmed is now working to establish viable commercial production and delivery systems, aiming that by the end of 2011, all aspects of the production and delivery of East Coast fever vaccine are in private hands.

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New project launched to investigate how immunity develops in cattle to fatal diseases caused by different strains of tick-borne parasites

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Millions of African families could be saved from destitution thanks to a much-needed vaccine that is being mass-produced in a drive to protect cattle against a deadly parasite.

East Coast fever is a tick-transmitted disease that kills one cow every 30 seconds – with one million a year dying of the disease.

Calves are particularly susceptible to the disease. In herds kept by the pastoral Maasai people, for example, the disease kills from 20 to over 50 per cent of all unvaccinated calves. This makes it difficult and often impossible for the herders to plan for the future, to improve their livestock enterprises and thus to raise their standard of living.

An experimental vaccine against East Coast fever was first developed more than 30 years ago. This has been followed by work to allow the vaccine to be produced on a large scale, with major funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and others.

East Coast Fever puts the lives of more than 25 million cattle at risk in the 11 countries where the disease is now endemic, and endangers a further 10 million animals in new regions such as southern Sudan, where the disease has been spreading at a rate of more than 30 kilometres a year. The vaccine could save the 11 affected countries at least £175 million a year.

The immunization procedure – called “infection-and-treatment” because the animals are infected with whole parasites while being treated with antibiotics to stop development of disease – has proved highly effective. However, initial stocks produced in the 1990s recently ran low.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), at the request of the Africa Union/Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources and chief veterinary officers in affected countries, produced one million doses of vaccine to fill this gap. However, for the longer term it is critical that sustainable commercial systems for vaccine production, distribution and delivery are established.

With UK£16.5 million provided by DFID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charity GALVmed is fostering innovative commercial means to do just this, beginning with the registration and commercial distribution and delivery of this new batch of the vaccine. This will ensure that the vaccine is made available, accessible and affordable to livestock keepers who need it most and to scale up its production for the future.

International Development Minister Mike Foster said:
“Some 1.3 billion of the world's poorest people rely on livestock for their livelihoods. Many Africans depend on the health of their cattle for milk, meat and as their only hard asset for trade and investment. A smallholder dairy farmer can take years to recover economically from the death of a single milking cow. That’s why it’s vital that every possible step is taken to ensure that these essential vaccine doses are sustainably produced, tested and made available to the people who need them.

“DFID is supporting GALVmed to explore ways of transferring the production and distribution of the vaccine into the private sector through local manufacturers and distributors. This is extremely important in making the vaccine affordable, accessible and – crucially – sustainable.”

GALVmed CEO Steve Sloan said:
“Funded by DFID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GALVmed is working to protect livestock and the livelihoods of their owners. Thanks to the highly effective East Coast fever vaccine developed over many years by researchers working in East Africa and then refined and mass produced by ILRI, cattle invaluable to pastoralists such as the Maasai as well as smallholder dairy farmers are being protected. 
“The survival of cattle for the millions who live on tiny margins has a direct effect on quality of life and the dignity of choice and self-determination. Collaborating with ILRI and partners in the developing world, including governments and veterinary distributors and those from the private sector, GALVmed is working to embed the vaccine through registration in East African countries and to scale up its production so that it remains accessible to poor people.
“This pioneering registration effort aims to ensure that the vaccine is approved and monitored by affected nations and enables local firms to sell and distribute it, embedding its sustainability. Registration in Malawi is already complete, with significant progress in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.”
ILRI veterinary scientist Henry Kiara, who has conducted research on the live vaccine for 20 years, explains that ILRI is “looking forward to commercialising the production, distribution and delivery of the vaccine to the smallholder and emerging dairy producers as well as livestock herders” in this region of Africa. “Now that all the building blocks are in place, thanks to past investments by DFID and others”, he says, “we are excited to be at a stage where this vaccine can ‘take off’.”

Over the past several years, the field logistics involved in mass vaccinations of cattle with the infection-and-treatment method have been greatly improved, due largely to the work of a private Company called VetAgro Tanzania Ltd, working with Maasai cattle herders in northern Tanzania. Sustainability underpins GALVmed’s approach and the charity is working with developing world partners to ensure that the vaccine is available to those who need it most, bringing public and private partners together.

About the vaccine
The infection-and-treatment immunisation method against East Coast fever was developed by research conducted over three decades by the East African Community, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) at Muguga, Kenya (www.kari.org), and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya (www.ilri.org). This long-term research was funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) (www.dfid.gov.uk) and other donors of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) (www.cgiar.org). The first bulk batch of the vaccine, produced by ILRI 15 years ago, has protected one million animals, whose survival raised the standard of living for livestock keepers and their families. Field trials of the new vaccine batch, also produced at ILRI, are being completed in accordance with international standards to ensure that it is safe and effective.

About East Coast fever
East Coast fever was first recognized in southern Africa when it was introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century with cattle imported from eastern Africa, where the disease had been endemic for centuries. It caused dramatic losses with high cattle mortality. It has persisted in 11 countries in eastern, central and southern Africa – Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The disease devastates the livelihoods of small-scale mixed crop-and-livestock farmers and smallholder and emerging dairy producers, as well as pastoral livestock herders, such as the Maasai in East Africa.

East Coast fever, or theileriosis, is a devastating cancer-like disease of cattle that often kills the animals within three weeks of infection. It is caused by the single-celled parasite Theileria parva, which is transmitted by the brown ear tick (Rhipicephalus appendiculatus) as it feeds on cattle. In addition to producing the infection-and-treatment vaccine, ILRI is also working to develop a genetically engineered next-generation vaccine.

Some 70 per cent of the human population of sub-Saharan Africa – around half a billion people – depend on livestock for their livelihoods, with farming and herding families relying on cattle for vital sources of food, income, traction, transportation and manure to fertilise croplands.

A case study showing the impact of the disease on Maasai herders is included below. Further case studies illustrating the impact of the infection-and-treatment vaccine on people’s lives are available on the GALVmed website at: www.galvmed.org/path-to-progress

Case Study: East Coast fever in Tanzania
Maasai herders in Tanzania have been particularly devastated by East Coast fever. In parts of northern Tanzania, more than 1 in 5 calves die before reaching maturity (54 months) in the lowlands and more than one third fail to reach maturity in the (wetter) highlands, where tick-borne and other diseases are more prevalent.

Although the infection-and-treatment vaccine is a “live” vaccine, and thus needs to be stored in liquid nitrogen and administered by skilled practitioners, after which the animals must be monitored by experts for several days, the Maasai here are desperate for the new batch to be ready.

Introduction of the previous batch in recent years has drastically reduced calf mortality, from up to 80 per cent to less than 2 per cent. The protection afforded by the vaccine is so good that Maasai herders are willing to pay for these vaccinations. The vaccine appears to protect the animals against other ailments as well and, in addition, those mature animals that are marked with ear tags as having been vaccinated are fetching up to 50 per cent higher prices in the market. The vaccine is allowing these cattle herders to sell more animals and to invest their new income in, for example, bettering their household diets or paying for their children’s education. The new access to this vaccine is facilitating a transition among the Maasai in herd management, from a subsistence- to a market-orientation.

GALVmed has regular contact with those on the ground to improve access to the vaccine, including a meeting with 25 Masaai livestock keepers in Arusha, in northern Tanzania, earlier this year. At that meeting a Masaai representative stated:

“Please thank all those people who made the vaccine and also those who make it available for us to buy. Tell them not to stop their good work. No cattle means no Maasai – and no East Coast fever vaccine means no cattle.”

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Proceedings of the 4th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture ‘The role of biotechnology in animal agriculture to address poverty in Africa’, now available for download

The theme of the 4th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture was ‘The role of biotechnology in animal agriculture to address poverty in Africa: Opportunities and challenges’. The conference, which was held in Arusha, Tanzania, in September 2005, was organized by the All Africa Society for Animal Production (AASAP) in association with the Tanzania Society for Animal Production (TSAP), and partnership with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The recently released proceedings contain over 50 papers by leading experts in biotechnology covering animal health, genetic diversity and improvement and animal feeds and nutrition. The technologies reported ranged from the rather conventional approaches to the more advanced molecular techniques.

ILRI’s director general, Carlos Seré, and ILRI’s director of biotechnology, Ed Rege, presented a paper on Agricultural biotechnology for poverty alleviation at the first plenary session. The paper highlights opportunities for livestock biotechnologies in the areas of animal health through new/improved vaccines and diagnostics, genetic improvement of livestock, conservation of indigenous breeds and genetic diversity, and improving the nutritional quality of feeds. They argue animal agriculture will continue to be of considerable importance for poverty alleviation in Africa for some time to come, and that appropriate applications of biosciences can increase the pace of Africa’s agricultural and economic development.

‘Economic development in Africa will, of necessity, have to be initially linked to agriculture (broadly defined to include crop, livestock, forestry and fish). Staple crops and livestock are most likely to promote economic growth in the continent. To date, public sector investment in biotechnology in Africa has led to few products.

‘However, similar to what is happening in Asia and Latin America, there is a great opportunity for Africa to mobilize science to create wealth for its people and achieve higher economic growth.

‘If a new technology is useful and the price is right, the spread is almost unstoppable. Clearly, biotechnology is not a substitute for other technologies, but is an additional arsenal which should be used as and when appropriate to increase the pace of agricultural development. It is simply another arrow in the quiver!’

Copies of this new publication will be made available at the Africa Agricultural Science Week and the 4th Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) General Assembly in Johannesburg on 10– 16 June 2007.

Download the book: http://mahider.ilri.org/bitstream/10568/2275/1/Role%20of%20biotechnology.pdf

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The Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicine (GALVmed) recently unveiled animal health projects it will tackle over the next ten years.

GALVmed announced progress on vaccine and treatments for Newcastle disease in poultry and East Coast fever and Rift Valley fever in cattle at its international launch at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), in Nairobi, on Friday 9 March 2007. This marked the beginning of a 10-year program aimed at creating sustainable solutions to the loss of human and animal life caused by livestock diseases, which threaten 600 million of the poorest people in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

GALVmed, a non-profit organization funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), is partnering with private and public-sector organizations around the world. It has identified 13 livestock diseases as key targets for development of livestock vaccines and animal health diagnostics and medicines. Founder members of the agency include the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), FARM-Africa, Pfizer, Intervet and Merial. GALVmed exists to broker partnerships among pharmaceutical companies and other public and private-sector organizations to develop accessible and affordable animal vaccines for the whole world’s poorest farmers.

Zoonotic diseases, which are transmitted between animals and humans, mainly afflict the poorest households, as evidenced by the recent outbreak of Rift Valley fever in livestock in Kenya, which killed 150 people. Brian Perry, a senior scientist at ILRI, warns that ‘Today, combating livestock diseases is everybody’s business – tropical animal diseases are no longer “just a local problem”. For example, there is a threat that diseases like Rift Valley fever will follow bluetongue into Europe.’

GALVmed’s chief executive Steve Sloan explains that ‘Every year, poor farmers worldwide lose an average of a quarter and in some cases half, of their herds and flocks to preventable disease. This devastates developing economies. Many of these are zoonotic and so also cause human deaths.

Livestock play a critical role in helping people escape poverty. Livestock disease is one of the greatest barriers to development for poor livestock keepers. Flocks and herds die every year from diseases for which vaccine simply do not exist or are beyond the reach of the poor. John McDermott, ILRI’s deputy director general for research says, ‘ILRI scientists and partners have done ground breaking science to develop an experimental vaccines to protect cattle against East Coast fever. The next steps are to conduct trials to facilitate the delivery of this vaccine to the farmers. To do that, we need specialist partners who will test, manufacture and market the vaccine and make it accessible and affordable to the thousands of livestock keepers afflicted by this cattle killing disease.

Click here for the GALVmed News release.

To find out more about GALVmed visit the website
www.galvmed.org

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Specialists at a new-age computing facility are seeking partnerships with international universities to develop world-class bioinformatics capacity in Africa – and Africa's first generation of bioinformaticians.
 
One of the great recent successes of African biosciences was mapping the genetic code of a parasite known as Theileria parva. This single-celled parasite is transmitted to cattle by biting ticks and causes East Coast fever, which kills a million cattle a year in 11 countries of Africa and is responsible for up to half of all deaths of calves kept by pastoralists there. Much of the work that contributed to this world-class scientific breakthrough, published in the prestigious journal Science, was undertaken in Africa by scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, in partnership with scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), based in the Maryland, USA.

Working with ILRI, scientists at TIGR first sequenced the genome of the T. parva parasite. Most of the subsequent work in annotating the sequence by identifying genes and assigning gene functions was performed by two bioinformatics specialists at ILRI— South African Etienne de Villiers and Kenyan Trushar Shah—using ILRI’s new high-performance computing facility at its Nairobi laboratories.

de Villiers, Shah and colleagues are hoping to build on this breakthrough to strengthen bioinformatics capacity in Africa. They are forming partnerships with leading universities worldwide with the aim of offering post- and under-graduate training in bioinformatics in and for Africa until African universities begin offering masters and doctoral degrees in this new discipline.

 High-performance computing in and for Africa
The high-performance computing facility on ILRI’s campus in Nairobi provides local scientists with access to state-of-the-art technologies to enable them to conduct extensive and large-scale genomics research fast and cost-effectively for the first time. The facility has been established in Nairobi to serve the bioinformatics needs of ILRI and the eastern and central African scientific community. It is being managed as a shared facility by a new regional science platform called ‘Biosciences eastern and central Africa’ (BecA), whose hub is at ILRI’s Nairobi laboratories.

Etienne de Villiers explains that, ‘Exploitation of the latest genome technologies requires scientists skilled in bioinformatics and with access to high-performance computing infrastructure. The strategy behind high-performance computing is “divide and conquer”. Dividing a complex problem into smaller component tasks, that can be worked on simultaneously by computer, saves time, physical and human resources and money.

‘Bioinformatics is a relatively new specialist area. We need to raise awareness of the field here in Africa and expose people to its potential. The West has spent millions of dollars sequencing the genomes of humans, animals, plants and parasites and the resulting data are freely available on the internet. This is a vast body of knowledge that local scientists can use to solve their specific problems or to answer research questions. All scientists in Africa need to make use of these data are a computer, good internet access and bioinformatics skills.’

Raising awareness and building capacity in Africa
ILRI/BecA training courses and research projects are already taking advantage of the high-performance computing facility, which was commissioned in January 2005. In association with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the Linnaeus Centre for Bioinformatics, in Uppsala, Sweden, ILRI and BecA recently ran a three-day training workshop that introduced 30 scientists and students from eastern and central Africa to the field of bioinformatics.

BecA scientist Trushar Shah says that ‘bioinformatics is a new and dynamic field that young African scientists should be getting involved in, whether as a specialist or a user exploiting the technology to help answer a complex research question. Our recent short training course was very successful and we are organizing a further course in April 2007.’

Participants at the Bioinformatics introductory course, August 2006
 

Home grown strategies and interim partnerships
de Villiers is an advocate of home-grown strategies that take into consideration local needs to build capacity in Africa. ‘One of our primary goals is to grow the number and competence of bioinformatics developers and users in the east and central Africa region. To do that, we have to be responsive to local needs. We are raising awareness of the importance and utility of bioinformatics, providing introductory training for early-career scientists, and giving skilled bioinformaticians in the region ready access to advanced tools, support and expertise. We are also considering the longer term and how best we can contribute to building bioinformatics skills and expertise throughout Africa.

‘Local universities are working hard to build capacity but at the moment are unable to award degrees in bioinformatics. Our thrust now is to explore partnerships with leading bioinformatics institutes to enable us to make undergraduate and postgraduate training possible. We are working to link up with universities with well-established training programs in bioinformatics to offer East and Central African students masters and doctoral degree training in bioinformatics, possibly through distance learning.
 
‘We are also planning to link up with universities and institutes that can host these students for a few months so they can gain practical experience in the applications of bioinformatics. This way we are also training future local trainers.’

de Villiers was recently made Extraordinary Lecturer at the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Unit of Pretoria University, in South Africa. This appointment enables him to supervise students from eastern and central Africa who are affiliated with the high-performance computing facility and wish to pursue higher degrees in bioinformatics through Pretoria University.

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A group of determined Kenyan livestock keepers set in motion an innovative collaboration that has benefited cattle-keeping communities throughout Kenya
 
Starting in 2000, word started getting out among Kenyan pastoralists that a vaccine being administered in Tanzania was succeeding in protecting cattle against East Coast fever. Kenya at that time did not condone use of this vaccine due to perceived safety and other issues, and so Kenya ’s livestock keepers could not get hold of it. In response, they began to walk their calves across the Kenya border into Tanzania to get them vaccinated.

‘East Coast fever is responsible on average for half of the calf mortality in pastoral production systems in eastern Africa . This vaccine represented a much needed lifeline for many pastoralists, and livestock keepers in Kenya wanted access to it,’ Evans Taracha, head of animal health at at ILRI explained.

‘ILRI faced a dilemma. We had produced a vaccine right here in Nairobi, at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), that could protect pastoral and other cattle against East Coast fever, but, due to government regulations, our beneficiaries could not get access to it in Kenya.’

Kenya’s livestock keepers then started lobbying national authorities and called upon Vétérinaires sans Frontières (VSF)-Germany, an international veterinary NGO based in East Africa , to help them. Thus began a highly successful multi-partner collaboration.

Besides VSF-Germany, the collaboration includes ILRI, the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), the African Union-InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU/IBAR), the Director of Veterinary Services (DVS), the NGO VetAgro, and the community-based Loita Development Foundation.

Gabriel Turasha, field veterinary coordinator for VSF-G said, ‘The demand for this vaccine was evident from the farmers’ actions. What we needed to prove – to the authorities restricting its use – was that the vaccine was safe, effective and a superior alternative to the East Coast fever control strategy already being used in Kenya .’

Armed with scientific evidence, the collaboration successfully lobbied the Kenyan government and then facilitated local production and local access to the vaccine. Three vaccine distribution centres have been established in Kenya and more than 10,000 calves vaccinated.

John McDermott, ILRI’s deputy director general of research, said, ‘This collaboration illustrates how the research from “discovery to delivery” can be facilitated by collaboration between research institutes, which are in the business of doing science, and development partners, which are in the business of on-the-ground delivery. This has been a great success story—and a great win for Kenya ’s pastoralists.’

This innovative collaboration has been selected as a finalist in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) ‘Innovation Marketplace Awards’. These awards recognize outstanding collaborative efforts among CGIAR-supported centres and civil society organizations. Four winners will be announced at the CGIAR’s Annual General Meeting, to be held in Washington, DC , in December 2006.

Carlos Seré, director general of ILRI, said, ‘We are delighted to learn that this partnership has received recognition. ILRI is involved in a host of innovative collaborations and continues to seek new partners—from civil society organizations to the private sector to local research institutions—to help us deliver on our promises to poor livestock keepers in developing countries.’

ollaborative Team Brings Vaccine against Deadly Cattle Disease to Poor Pastrolists for the First Time

Related Articles on Innovation Collaborations
ILRI recently collaborated with VSF-Belgium, VSF-Switzerland and two Italian NGOs in an Emergency Drought Response Program in Kenya.

VSF, ILRI, Italian NGOs, and Kenya Collaborate to Mitigate the Effects of Drought in Northern Kenya

The ILRI collaborative effort described in this Top Story was featured in the Journal of International Development (July 2005) as an example of a ‘potentially new model of research and development partnership’ with a more ‘complete’ approach to innovation.

Further Information
VSF-Germany is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization engaged in veterinary relief and development work. VSF-Germany's primary role involves the control and prevention of epidemics; the establishment of basic veterinarian services and para-veterinarian programs with high involvement of local people; the improvement of animal health, especially among agriculturally useful animals; food security through increases in the production of animal-based food and non-food products; and the reduction of animal diseases that are transferable to humans. VSF-Germany carries out emergency as well as development operations. The organization's area of operation is East Africa.

Website: http://www.vsfg.org/eng.php

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A new initiative aims to improve health, reduce malnutrition and food insecurity and promote pro-poor agricultural development through closer collaboration between the agriculture and health sectors.

Research at the crossroads of agriculture and health conducted by the 15 centers of the Consultative Group on International Research (CGIAR) has been building and increasing in recent years. The CGIAR centers have a long tradition of working on nutrition, and now conduct a wide range of health-related work in the context of agriculture, such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, food safety and the health effects of pesticide use.

Since 2004, steps have been taken to co-ordinate the health-related work conducted by the 15 centers. This included the founding of a committee of the directors general of the centers, a stock-take of the centers existing health-related work, a workshop on agriculture-health research in the CGIAR and the publication of a series of briefs on ‘Understanding the Linkages between Agriculture and Health’.

In 2006, the Alliance Executive of the CGIAR endorsed the concept of a research platform on Agriculture and Health as a way to move forward.

The ‘Resource Guide on CGIAR Research on Agriculture-Health Linkages’, hosted on the website of the International Food and Policy Research Institute, is a portal to the work conducted in this area by different CGIAR centers, showing who is doing what on health.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) now has a webpage on IFPRI's website highlighting the following areas of ILRI's research in relation to human health:

Livestock keeping and human health
As part of its People, Livestock and the Environment Theme, ILRI conducts research to protect and enhance the physical human capital of the poor by developing strategies to reduce health risks and improve nutritional benefits associated with livestock keeping. Other projects focused on the use of water and feed for livestock also consider human health impacts.

Impact of livestock production on human health and nutrition
ILRI is working to improve understanding of the links between livestock keeping and the health and nutrition of poor people, particularly those engaging in smallholder livestock production and marketing. Activities under way include field studies, literature reviews and explorations of the ways in which livestock keeping might benefit the care of people with HIV/AIDS.

Zoonotic diseases
Poor people in developing countries have a high risk of exposure to zoonoses—diseases transmitted from animals to people. ILRI is helping to bridge the artificial divide between animal and human health. With over 75% of human infections having a zoonotic origin, the need to examine the epidemiological relationships between pathogens and their animal and human hosts is paramount. ILRI is putting specifically focusing on a major neglected zoonoses, Cysticercosis, a highly complex disease affecting both people and pigs. ILRI is participating in a Cysticercosis Working Group of Eastern and Southern Africa (CWGESA), which promotes effective communication, collaboration and coordination of integrated research and control activities aimed at combating cysticercosis. CWGESA and ILRI have recently developed a Cysticercosis Prevention Poster which is currently available in English, Xhosa and Afrikaans. This poster is being used for a rapid information campaign in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa where a neurocysticercosis outbreak among children has been reported.

Livestock, water quality, and human health
ILRI has recently initiated limited research on water-mediated impacts on human health and on INRM approaches to reducing health risks. Most of this research falls within ILRI’s collaboration with the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food and the CGIAR Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management and Agriculture. Key issues include the transmission of water-borne pathogens such as coliform bacteria, cryptosporidium, and Fasciola that result from animal manure contaminating domestic water supplies and where simple remedial interventions are feasible

Wastewater is increasingly used for irrigation of fodder crops that fuel the growing urban and peri-urban dairy production in mega cities such as Hyderabad (India) and Faisalabad (Pakistan). ILRI in collaboration with IWMI and Indian and Pakistani public health institutions and municipal water authorities is investigating the relationship between water – soil – produce quality (fodder and milk) to assess the chain of possible contaminations (heavy metals, nitrate, parasites) and ultimately the hazards to producers (farmers, dairy producers) and consumers of livestock products in these urban areas.

Livestock feed quality and human health
Aflatoxin in milk – a possible hazard to human health: ILRI in collaboration with ICRISAT is investigating aflatoxin contamination of fodder (mainly crop residues) as a source of aflatoxin content in milk. In selected sites in Andhra Pradesh, India, close to 50% of the milk samples contained non-permissible levels of aflatoxin. At the same time, only one of the collected fodder samples (groundnut cake) contained non-permissible levels of alflatoxin. Aflatoxin in milk can clearly present a health hazard to the consumer.

Food safety associated with livestock and livestock products
This research program has focused on identifying the public health risks associated with the marketing of unpasteurized milk, with an emphasis on developing policies and technologies for improved quality and safety without jeopardizing market access for the poor. An outcome of this work has been changes in government policies towards more acceptance of raw milk marketing in several East African countries, based on the identified low risks and high dependence of resource poor people on these markets. This work is being expanded, in cooperation with IFPRI, to examine the marketing of other livestock and livestock products, particularly in South Asia. Studies provide policy-relevant analyses of the risks and economic benefits to poor farmers, market agents, and resource-poor consumers.

Demand for better quality and safe food is increasing among urban consumers, especially among affluent ones. This poses threats to the market opportunities of smallholder producers who often are unable to access technology, inputs and services to produce high quality products demanded by the market chains serving high-end consumers. ILRI research is trying to understand the nature of quality and safety attributes demanded by consumers, their willingness to pay for such attributes and how smallholders may respond to these through participation in market chains.

Vaccines, diagnostics and disease resistance
ILRI research on livestock vaccines has direct and indirect links to medical vaccine and diagnostic research. One aspect of this work involves host functional genomics as it relates to livestock diseases that can be transmitted to humans.

A project investigating resistance to trypanosomosis in cattle is shedding light on some of the basic questions of disease resistance, which may have implications for human medical treatment. ILRI researchers first identified several regions of the cattle genome in which genes contributing to resistance or susceptibility must lie. They then identified genes within a part of the bovine genome that affects anemia, a characteristic of the disease. Remarkably, significant differences between cattle breeds that are susceptible and resistant to the disease were found in one of the candidate genes. Such a result makes it possible that the gene in question is responsible for the difference in susceptibility to anemia in the two breeds. This is now being further investigated. More recent results of this trypanosomosis genomics research appear to have implications for medical research on cholesterol. For more information, contact ILRI’s Steve Kemp at s.kemp@cgiar.org

Initiatives and Networks
Urban Harvest Programme
ILRI is a member of Urban Harvest, a CGIAR initiative to use the collective knowledge and technologies of the CGIAR Centers to strengthen urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) practiced by the poor.

System-wide Initiative on Malaria in Agriculture (SIMA)
ILRI backstops a CGIAR-wide initiative addressing malaria in agricultural communities. The System-wide Initiative on Malaria in Agriculture (SIMA) focuses the combined skills and abilities of the agricultural and health research communities, government agencies and community-based organizations. Water- and land-use and crop- and livestock-production practices are studied across a range of agro-ecosystems in Africa to identify farming activities that encourage and discourage the breeding of the mosquito vector or alter the transmission of the disease. Research-based guidelines and tools are developed and tested for use by poor communities and the non-governmental organizations and governments that serve them.

Outreach and Events
CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
ILRI, IWMI and the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food is inviting individuals and organizations located in any of the ten riparian countries of the Nile River Basin to submit short well-written case studies describing traditional or contemporary innovations in technologies, in community and household practices, and in policies that result in better management of water and livestock resources. Relevant topics include the prevention of transmission of waterborne and water related zoonotic and animal diseases such as Cryptosporidiosis and Fasciolosis. This contest is offering USD 1000 for first prize, USD 500 for second prize and USD 250 for third prize. For more information, contact ILRI’s Don Peden at d.peden@cgiar.org

CGIAR Science Award for Promising Young Scientist
In 2005, ILRI scientist Simon Graham won the CGIAR Science Award for Promising Young Scientist for research leading to the development of a sensitive and robust system for identifying vaccine candidate molecules from Theileria parva that causes East Coast fever, a fatal disease of cattle in sub-Saharan Africa. Graham’s research may also contribute to ongoing efforts to control tropical theileriosis, a cattle disease which puts 250 million cattle around the world at risk. Furthermore, by using genomics to understand and fight T. parva, scientists may make advances against related parasites that cause malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases in which killer T cells also play a role in immunity. And because T. parva launches a cancer-like illness inside the white blood cells of cattle, it may provide a model system for understanding the mechanics of cancer biology.

Visit http://www.ifpri.org/themes/aghealth/aghealthrg.asp for the resource guide on IFPRI's website.

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Public-private partnership makes major step towards improving livestock health and reducing poverty.

The devastating effects of East Coast fever on the livelihoods of small-scale farmers may one day be a thing of the past as a team of international scientists moves closer towards the development of a vaccine.

“East Coast fever is an intractable problem that ravages cattle of the poor in Africa. The good news is that this can be solved by high-tech science and technological innovations, achievable through strategic partnerships’’. Evans Taracha – ILRI East Coast Fever Vaccine Project Leader

Every year, East Coast fever destroys the small farmer’s dream of escaping poverty in Africa. Killing more than a million cattle and costing some $200 million annually, this tick-borne disease rages across a dozen countries in eastern and central Africa. Now, an international team of scientists has taken the first major step toward a vaccine to prevent East Coast fever. Their work, published in the February 13-17 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows how genomics can generate pivotal new vaccines.

In the study, scientists from five institutions, including the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), identify five vaccine targets, or candidate proteins that could form the basis for an East Coast fever subunit vaccine. Based on combined bioinformatics analyses and lab tests, these proteins appear to provide a protective immune response to the disease. “This initiative took just three years, after many years of scientists trying other methods,” remarks Vishvanath Nene, former ILRI staff member, a study author and molecular biologist at TIGR. “It’s a huge jump forward.”

To make the jump, researchers used the genome sequence of the parasite responsible for East Coast fever. A tick-borne parasite, Theileria parva, causes the disease. When ticks infected with T. parva bite cattle, they transmit the parasite, launching the disease that typically kills cattle within a month. In July, 2005, TIGR led a research team that published T. parva’s genome sequence, representing roughly 4,000 genes, in Science.

In the current study, Nene, along with Malcolm Gardner and Claire Fraser-Liggett, also of TIGR, relied on known biology to search T. parva’s genome for potential vaccine proteins. First, scientists know that immunity to the parasite, and thus East Coast fever, emerges from immune system cells known as killer T cells. Second, they know that T. parva is an intracellular pathogen–it infects and secretes proteins inside cattle white blood cells, which become malignant. The white blood cell then unwittingly passes small fragments of the secreted parasitic proteins associated with a certain type if its own proteins along to its cell surface. And this is where a vaccine could come in: A vaccine made of the T. parva proteins found on the surface of host cells should trigger an immune response in cattle. Vaccinated cattle would then be protected from the parasite.

To find potential vaccine antigens, the TIGR researchers scanned T. parva’s entire genome for genes that make secreted proteins. In particular, they searched for genes that make a “secretion signal,” a telltale peptide sequence found at the start of secreted proteins. Sure enough, the scientists found some 400 T. parva genes containing the secretion signal. This set of genes provided a starting pool of candidate proteins. Based on further tests, the study’s research team, led by ILRI of Nairobi, Kenya, cloned 55 candidate antigen genes and screened those genes for response by killer T cells taken from cattle immune to East Coast fever. To complement TIGR’s gene selection strategy, ILRI also incorporated a random screen of T. parva DNA for vaccine candidates.

In total, the team found five candidate vaccine antigens. In lab tests, these antigens triggered a response from cattle immune killer T cells. Going a further step further, the scientists inoculated cattle with these antigens and then gave the cattle a potentially lethal dose of T. parva. When compared with control animals, vaccinated cattle showed significantly stronger immune response to the parasite.

“This study is a true milestone,” says Fraser-Liggett, president of TIGR. “It’s one of the first to take advantage of genomic technologies and build a test vaccine using immune killer T cells as a screening reagent.” In addition to TIGR and ILRI, the research team included scientists from: the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Brussels; the Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics in Oxford; Sanofi Pasteur in Toronto; the University of Edinburgh; and Merial SAS, an international animal health company. ILRI and Merial have partnered to develop a vaccine against East Coast fever.

By using genomics to understand and fight T. parva, scientists may make advances against related parasites that cause malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases in which killer T cells also play a role in immunity. What’s more, because T. parva launches a cancer-like illness inside the white blood cells of cattle, it may provide a model system for understanding the mechanics of cancer biology.

But for Nene, who was born in Kenya and worked at ILRI for 15 years before coming to TIGR in 2001, the march against East Coast fever is significant reward, itself. “This disease takes an enormous toll on the local society and economy of rural areas across eastern and central Africa, including Maasai and other pastoral communities,” he says. In particular, East Coast fever kills cattle kept by families trying to rise out of poverty. If researchers are successful, Nene notes, the entire region will have new reason to hope for a better life. Evans Taracha, ILRI project leader, also highlights the importance of strategic research partnerships to overcome this and similar diseases.

TIGR’s portion of the PNAS study was funded independently by TIGR and by sub-contract from the Animal Health Program of the United Kingdom Department for International Development, with previous contributions from J. Craig Venter and the ILRI for the T. parva genome project.

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ILRI vaccine developers won an award for Outstanding Scientific Article. Another ILRI team conducting research on savannah ecosystems shared an award for their innovative collaboration with Maasai landowners in Kenya.

Scientific Recognition

Each year, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) recognizes the scientific contributions of the 15 agricultural research centres it supports through its Science Awards, presented at its Annual General Meeting (AGM), held each year in December.

At the CGIAR’s AGM held in Washington DC at the end of last year, scientists from ILRI and The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) picked up the award for ‘Outstanding Scientific Article’ for their paper, published in the top scientific journal Science, ‘Genome Sequence of Theileria parva: a Bovine Pathogen that Transforms Lymphocytes’. The team, led by Malcolm Gardner of TIGR, received a cash prize of US$10,000, which is being donated to fund travel for staff and students to attend conferences in this area.

The paper’s second author, ILRI scientist Richard Bishop, said: “We are delighted to receive this award. Our multi-partner collaboration and recent discoveries illustrate that African science is forging ahead – we are collaborating with world-class players and producing world-class science right here in Africa, for Africa.”

Pictured above from left to right: ILRI’s Director of Research, John McDermott, and TIGR scientist (and former ILRI staff member) Vish Nene, with the Award for ‘Outstanding Scientific Paper’. Looking on is ILRI’s Director General Carlos Seré and Bruce Scott, ILRI Director, Partnership and Communications.

Download TIGR/ILRI Press Release

Innovative Collaboration with Civil Society

The CGIAR also recognizes the contributions of innovative collaborations between CGIAR-supported centres and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) through its ‘Innovation Marketplace Awards’. This year, 46 CSOs were invited to participate at the CGIAR Innovation Marketplace to showcase their collaborative work and share experiences.

ILRI’s collaboration with the Kitengela Ilparakuo Landowners Association (KILA) was one of four collaborations to win a Judges’ Award with a cash prize of US$30,000, to use for further collaborative work. ILRI has been collaborating with the Maasai of Kitengela Plains, located next to Nairobi National Park, in Kenya, since 2002. They have devised means to ensure that people, livestock and wildlife can live in harmony and have lobbied government to reduce fencing to allow the annual migration of wildlife though the Kitengela Plains, thus helping to prevent conflicts between wildlife and people and their livestock. Other collaborators of the program are Kenya Wildlife Service, Friends of Nairobi National Park, The Wildlife Foundation and Kajiado County Council.

The prize award was collected by ILRI’s CSO representative Ogeli Ole Makui and ILRI’s Mohammed Said. Makui said: “This award means so much to us. Our major challenge is to move forward and continue with the collaboration to help the community move forward. The Landowners Association will be using the prize money to fund further collaborative work.

Pictured above, from left to right: CGIAR Chair and Vice President of the World Bank Kathy Siena, the Program Officer of the Kitengela Land Lease Program, Ogeli Ole Makui and ILRI scientist Mohammed Said.

Download the award-winning poster

ILRI Awards

Dr Carlos Seré , ILRI’s Director General, said: “ILRI’s work is frequently recognized at the CGIAR’s annual awards. Each year the bar is raised and this year was no exception. Competition was tough with a very high standard of entries in all categories. We wish to extend our congratulations to the winners from our sister centres and are delighted that ILRI has won two of the top awards this year. This recognizes our commitment and contributions to both science and society.”

Pictured above from left: ILRI Directors Carlos Seré and Bruce Scott and the President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz at the CGIAR exhibit booth at the AGM in December 2006 in Washington, DC.

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