AUJESZKY'S DISEASE. VETERINARY HERPESVIROLOGY FROM BASIC SCIENCE TO DISEASE CONTROL

AUJESZKY'S DISEASE (PSEUDORABIES) -- VETERINARY HERPESVIROLOGY FROM BASIC SCIENCE TO DISEASE CONTROL
Lecture by Thomas C. METTENLEITER (Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute -- Germany), foreign member of the Académie royale de Médecine de Belgique at the Academy on 28th of September 2013.

Herpesviruses play an important role in veterinary medicine. The suid alphaherpesvirus pseudorabies virus (PrV) has first been described by Aladár Aujeszky at the beginning of the 20th century and the disease it causes has been named after him. After an upsurge of Aujeszky's disease from the 1950's, it has been eradicated from many countries in Europe and North America by the first large scale use of genetically modified live vaccines allowing differentiation between infected and vaccinated animals ('marker vaccines'). This breakthrough in the control of infectious animal diseases has served as a blueprint for subsequent programs targeting other pathogens. It has been the result of dedicated basic science which continues. Thus, PrV can serve as an excellent model for analysis of basic features of herpesvirus replication such as viral entry and egress. In this presentation I will review more than 30 years of own research on PrV highlighting important contributions to the development of modern vaccines and to understanding basic features of the complex herpesvirus replication cycle.