Topic

Recent developments in the prevention and control of Avian influenza Viruses

Introduction

Professor Munir Iqbal is the Head of the Avian Influenza and Newcastle Disease group at The Pirbright Institute and a visiting professor at the Royal Veterinary College, London. Munir obtained Veterinary Medicine and MPhil degrees in Pakistan and a PhD in Biotechnology at Imperial College London in 1991. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool and the University of St Andrews before joining the Institute in 1996. Currently, he is leading several research projects aimed at defining the impact of genetic changes on the ability of avian influenza and Newcastle disease viruses to evade immune responses, cause increased disease severity, and allow cross-species transmission. Along with unravelling the host factors that determine avian-origin influenza virus replication fitness in mammalian species. He is also leading the development of new multivalent vaccines and diagnostics for better control of avian respiratory viruses like avian influenza, Newcastle disease, avian adenovirus, and avian metapneumoviruses.Recently, his group has developed a novel targeted antigen delivery vaccine platform that selectively delivers vaccine antigens to chicken immune cells, inducing faster, stronger, and more durable immunity. The multivalent vectored vaccines he developed include recombinant NDV, recombinant herpesvirus of turkey (rHVT), and recombinant duck enteritis virus (rDEV), providing robust immunity to chickens against multiple avian viral diseases. The multivalent subunit vaccines produced in insect cells also protect chickens from several poultry viruses. He also developed a passive immunization approach to protect poultry from AIV. His recent studies have identified antigenic epitopes on the hemagglutinin antigens of H5, H9, and H7 AIVs that induce protective immune responses, with implications for vaccine strain selection. His group is developing novel easy-to-use aptamer-based diagnostic tests allowing rapid, sensitive, and reliable differential diagnosis of avian respiratory viruses at the pen-side or point-of-care.