Abstract #448

# 448
Bovine tuberculosis—An ongoing animal health challenge.
V. Kapur*1, 1Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a chronic disease that limits livestock productivity and represents a significant threat to human health with annual economic losses estimated at over $3 billion. While the disease is well controlled in the developed world, it remains endemic in many developing countries. Given the importance of the dairy and livestock industry to inclusive agricultural transformation, improved nutrition, and overall economic development, there is an increased emphasis on improving animal productivity and intensive farming techniques. However, in the absence of an effective bTB control program, intensification of dairy production is expected to drive an increase in bTB prevalence and associated animal and human disease and reduction in animal productivity (~10% reduction each in milk productivity and reproductive efficiency, and 20% loss in weight of bTB infected animals). While the implementation of bTB control programs has been documented to result in reduction in human death and suffering together with an almost 10-fold return on investment in animal productivity and economic benefit to farmers, the upfront costs associated with implementing the test and cull program in developing countries where the majority of livestock are owned by small and marginal farmers is not feasible for social and economic reasons. Hence, there is an increasing recognition of the urgent need to accelerate the development and implementation of rational evidence-based approaches to control bTB. This presentation will describe a recently initiated program in India and Ethiopia to assess vaccines to block onward transmission (cattle-to- cattle or cattle-to- other livestock, human or wildlife), as well as develop and validate fit-for- purpose diagnostic assays to differentiate vaccinated from infected animals, together providing a strong foundation for the development of effective bTB control programs in developing countries.

Key Words: bovine tuberculosis, vaccine

Speaker Bio
Vivek Kapur is Huck Distinguished Chair in Global Health, professor of microbiology and infectious diseases and associate director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State. He is also professor of infectious diseases and global health at the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology in Tanzania. Kapur has clinical training in veterinary medicine, doctoral training in the microbiology, population genetics, and pathogenesis, and postdoctoral training in the molecular evolution and mechanisms of pathogenesis of a wide variety of bacterial and viral pathogens. As an early adopter in the field of microbial genomics, his research group has been responsible for the complete genome sequencing of many of the most important pathogens that cause diseases in animals and humans, and his findings have led to important insights on the evolution and mechanisms of pathogenesis of these organisms, as well as diagnostic test and vaccine development through genomics enabled approaches. He has led large international consortia and served in a leadership capacity in the area of pathogen diagnostics and molecular evolution for DHS and NIH funded centers of excellence, led an NIH funded consortium on microbial genome sequencing focused on evolution of pathogens, and has served as a consultant in the areas of genomics and diagnostics to major corporations. He is listed as an inventor on several issued and licensed US and international patents relating to diagnostics and vaccines, and has co-founded several start-up companies in these areas. He has published over 175 peer-reviewed papers that have together been cited over 16,000 times. He has been the recipient (as PI and co-PI) of federal grant awards exceeding $100 M, and helped establish and lead extramurally funded international research and training programs including relating to global health security. Competitive grant awards from the US Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, Department of Agriculture, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) currently support Kapur’s research program.