African swine fever remains one of the greatest threats to global pork production. The virus is lethal for domestic pigs and wild boar in Europe and Asia, but does not cause clinical disease in wild African suids. Due to the absence of a safe and effective vaccine, ASF control currently relies on strict measures such as culling infected animals and imposing quarantines, leading to significant economic losses.
Despite decades of research, most scientific studies have focused primarily on domestic pigs. The immune mechanisms that allow wild African suids to coexist with the virus without developing disease remain poorly understood. The new research project aims to address this critical knowledge gap.
Scientists at the Roslin Institute have developed a platform based on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which enables the generation of macrophages — key immune cells that are the primary targets of the ASF virus. Using this technology, researchers can compare how macrophages from domestic pigs and red river hogs respond to ASFV infection.
The project involves broad international collaboration. Scientists from the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) are contributing high-throughput bioinformatics and comparative genomics, while Spain’s Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) provides expertise in virology, host–pathogen interactions and single-cell RNA sequencing.
The research is funded through the EU Partnership on Animal Health and Welfare, with support from the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra). The programme aims to promote sustainable livestock, poultry and aquaculture production.
Chris Netherton, head of the African swine fever vaccinology group at The Pirbright Institute, notes that the key objective is to identify host factors responsible for resistance to the virus. According to him, researchers hypothesise that susceptibility or resilience to ASF is largely determined by intrinsic characteristics of macrophages and their innate immune responses. The project seeks to identify biomarkers of resistance that could form the basis for new preventive strategies against the disease.
The Roslin Institute emphasises that combining high-throughput genetic screening with advanced stem cell technologies will allow scientists to assess the function of thousands of genes simultaneously and pinpoint those that play a critical role in regulating ASF infection.
French and Spanish partners stress that understanding the links between innate immune sensing, cytokine production and the overall immune response is essential for combating ASF. Researchers at the CRG also point out that recent ASF detections near Barcelona highlight the constant risk of the virus spreading in Europe.
The three-year project aims to identify key genetic factors underpinning resistance and tolerance to ASFV through comparative analysis of domestic pigs and wild African suids. In the longer term, these insights could represent an important step toward the development of an effective ASF vaccine and the strengthening of global biosecurity in the pig sector.
PigUA.info based on materials from nationalhogfarmer.com