Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** african swine fever (ASF) is a…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** african swine fever (ASF) is a foreign animal disease caused by ASF virus (asfv) and remains one of the largest threats to pork production worldwide. The U.S. Has not been HIT by ASF outbreaks, but in 2021, ASF was reported in dominican republic and haiti, placing the U.S. On high alert to increase ASF surveillance and preparedness. ASF is routinely detected by enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay (elisa), which is a serological test for asfv antibodies. There are currently no ASF elisa approved by the USDA. However, elisa can be used to screen for ASF, whereby positive results are verfied with a secondary confirmation test. The only approved confirmation tests face technical challenges, as they are time-consuming, employ ASF viruses, and require a high-security biological safety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory. Thus, ASF surveillance is limited by the number of BSL-3 facilities and their personnel. Our project goal is to develop an elisa confirmation test, which uses asfv proteins, rather than viruses, and will be accessible to a broad network of low-security BSL-2 laboratories. An accessible elisa confirmation test has the potential to significantly improve ASF surveillance, containment, and prevention for the U.S. And global pork industry, resulting in better food security and biosecurity during emerging outbreaks.to develop an elisa that has comparable performance to standard confirmation tests, we will identify multiple asfv antigens, which are asfv proteins capable of detecting host ASF antibodies. We will use a multiple antigen elisa strategy that can significantly improve the chances of ASF confirmation by testing for multiple host antibodies. We previously identified three of these antigens, and we will evaluate 12 additional antigens in this project. The final elisa design will use up to 11 ASF antigens capable of detecting 11 different ASF antibodies from the host. Elisa research and development will be conducted in our BSL-2 facility, and we will collaborate with a BSL-3 asfv reference laboratory to validate prototypes with samples from asfv-infected animals and compare our elisa to standard confirmation tests.