A Solution To Global Swine Disease

Prof Gordon Allan (Queen’s University Belfast) was appointed in 2011 as the ‘World Leading Expert’ Professor of Porcine Virology.  He is responsible for developing a vaccine that eradicated a wasting disease in pigs.  The disease, PCV2, was extremely virulent and spread rapidly across the globe during the ‘noughties’; the cost to farming globally was immense. 

The developed vaccine and diagnostics for PCV2 are now sold world-wide.  The vaccine is regarded as probably the most efficient ever produced and so successful that pigs no longer get the disease. The PCV2 vaccine is the biggest-selling veterinary vaccine in the world generating around 400m US dollars annually.

Prof Allen has the foresight to recognise that another swine disease could well be lurking around the corner.  He is not complacent and continues to work with his extensive network of scientific experts in scanning the horizon for the next PCV.

Further information on this and other stories is published in Queen’s University Belfast publication ‘The DNA of Innovation, Volume Two’