When will an African swine fever vaccine be available on the market?
On August 16, the invention patent gazette on the website of the National Intellectual Property Administration showed that the patent "Gene-deleted attenuated African swine fever virus and its application as a vaccine" by the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Harbin Sub-center of the China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center) was published. This invention can serve as a safe and effective vaccine for the prevention and control of China's African swine fever epidemic and has great social value. Industry insiders estimate that the successful development of an African swine fever vaccine will take 8-10 years.
Research on China's African swine fever vaccine is led by the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute. According to an earlier report from a Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences research progress briefing, the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute has successfully isolated China's first strain of African swine fever virus and created two candidate African swine fever vaccine strains, with the preclinical pilot product process research initially completed. At present, the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute's African swine fever vaccine research and development is in the laboratory research stage. Referring to the biological product research and development process, the subsequent stages include intermediate research, clinical research and new veterinary drug research.
African swine fever virus was discovered as early as the beginning of the 20th century, but vaccine research lagged behind for more than 40 years. Judging from the current situation, gene-deleted vaccines can provide complete protection. China's African swine fever vaccine research and development has made positive progress, and research institutions have initially completed laboratory-stage research on independently constructed gene-deleted candidate vaccine strains, but the timetable cannot be determined. According to the African swine fever vaccine development roadmap released by the European Union in 2017, it is expected that the research and development of an African swine fever vaccine will take 8-10 years. Tianfeng Securities believes that, on a base of 600 million pigs and under the neutral scenario of using market vaccines for all of them, the potential market size would reach 15 billion yuan. In order to quickly control the epidemic and meet the market's demand for vaccines, only vaccine enterprises that meet the conditions and have production capacity are expected to obtain vaccine production licenses, and it is expected that listed companies will most likely become the first batch of African swine fever vaccine manufacturers.