EuFMD OS20

1. FOCUSING THE GLOBAL RESEARCH
EFFORT TO DELIVER THE REQUIRED
TOOLS AND STRATEGIES FOR FMD
CONTROL
S. Messori*,1,2, J. Salt3, S. Zientara4, M. Perez-Filgueira5,6, A. Morrow1,7
1STAR-IDAZ International Research Consortium.
2World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), 12 rue Prony,
75017, Paris, France.
3GALVmed, Doherty Building, Pentlands Science Park, Bush
Loan, Edinburgh, EH26 0PZ, UK.
4JRU Virology ANSES, INRAE, ENVA, Animal Health laboratory,
7 avenue du Général de Gaulle, 94704 Maisons-Alfort CEDEX,
France.
5INTA-CONICET, N. Repetto y De Los Reseros s/n, Hurlingham,
Buenos Aires (1686), Argentina.
6Global Foot and Mouth Disease Research Alliance (GFRA),
7Defra, Nobel House, 17 Smith Square. London SW1P 3JR,
UK.*
E-mail: s.messori@oie.int
Introduction
STAR-IDAZ International Research Consortium on
Animal health (IRC) is a global initiative aiming to
coordinate research at international level to
contribute developing strategies and control tools for
priority animal diseases.
The Consortium is composed by 28 research
funders/programme owners from 19 countries at
global level. It identified priority diseases needing
improved focus on research, and established
Working Groups (WG) of experts to perform gap
analyses, and to draft research roadmaps targeting
these priorities.
Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is one of the
selected priorities, and the Global FMD Research
Alliance (GFRA) acts as its WG.
Identify priorities
New calls for
projects
Material and Methods
The GFRA is a coordinated global alliance of scientists producing evidence
and innovation that enables the progressive control and eradication of
FMD. Research gaps on FMD were identified by the GFRA, and published
in scientific reports and publications.
Based on the identified gaps, the STAR-IDAZ IRC developed research
roadmaps for the development of candidate vaccines, diagnostic tests, and
control strategies for FMD. These interactive roadmaps describe the
building blocks and for each the key research questions, dependencies,
challenges and possible solution routes to identify the basic research
needed for translation to target product profiles.
A workshop was organised back-to-back with the 2019 GFRA Scientific
Meeting in Bangkok to validate the roadmaps, and to identify most (and
least) urgent research needs.
Discussion
The whole process allowed consulting a broad range of experts, from different geographical and epidemiological settings. Overall, this participatory
approach ensured the reliability of the identified needs and allowed the experts to feel ownership over the roadmaps.
These roadmaps would be an extremely valuable tool to research funders and donors for developing future research calls, allowing to streamline
efforts on most relevant topics, and accelerating the delivery of needed control tools.
FMD
Aim
To describe the drafting process for FMD research roadmaps and increase awareness about the identified research gaps
Establish Working
Group
Identify research
gaps
Define Research
Roadmaps
GFRA
GFRA
papers &
reports
9
Workshop
Horizon
scanning
Map
ongoing
research
Results
About 30 experts participated in the workshop, bringing a well-balanced
range of specialisations and wide geographical representation.
The experts validated the roadmaps and identified priority research needs
for both free and endemic countries for each of them.
The roadmaps were then published on the STAR-IDAZ IRC website
(www.star-idaz.net).