A review of vaccine development and research for industry animals in Korea

Lee, Nak-Hyung; Lee, Jung-Ah; Park, Seung-Yong; Song, Chang-Seon; Choi, In-Soo; Lee, Joong-Bok

Vaccination has been proven to be a cost-effective means to prevent infectious diseases and eradicate such infectious agents. As stated in this article, use of vaccines in industry animals has greatly influenced animal health, welfare, productivity of industry animals, and eventually contributed to food safety. Despite excellent illustration of vaccine effectiveness against various pathogens, development of animal vaccines has been recognized to be a challenging task due to the presence of a variety of animal types, infectious agents, and different pathogenic mechanisms for each pathogen. In some cases, animal scientists contribute to the development of human vaccines by providing research results obtained from experimental animals, as well as by attempting new trials on animals (which is less restricted than human trials). Due to their similar size and anatomy to humans, large animals, in particular pigs are useful for testing vaccine efficacy and vaccine delivery systems. The ultimate goal of animal vaccines is to provide efficient protection to various animals from such infectious agents. For this reason, development of animal vaccines should be achieved by multidisciplinary collaboration, including microbiology, immunology, proteomics, genetics, molecular biology, and even bioinformatics.