A Calgary research team hopes to develop beneficial bacteria as an enzyme delivery system against a common hog pathogen notorious for causing serious infections in piglets.
Swine Innovation Porc (SIP) on March 18 said it will provide up to $150,000 for a three-year research project led by Dongyan Xu Niu, a microbiologist and associate professor in the University of Calgary’s faculty of veterinary medicine.
Niu’s project will look at a new and different way to fight Streptococcus suis, a bacteria well known to cause respiratory infections, meningitis and sudden deaths in piglets after weaning.
WHY IT MATTERS: Canada’s hog farmers are mindful of over-reliance on antibiotics and could benefit from another way to keep S. suis in check.
The Calgary researchers plan to engineer beneficial lactobacillus bacteria to deliver enzymes that can specifically target and break down the S. suis pathogen, SIP said.
The team plans to identify and optimize these enzymes, integrate them into lactobacillus strains and then evaluate their ability to protect piglets from infection.
S. suis bacteria are endemic to Canada, colonizing most hog barns and spreading through contact with healthy carrier pigs after weaning, when antibodies from mother sows are unavailable to piglets. The bacteria are also known to be zoonotic, meaning they can cause severe infections in people who’ve had close contact with infected pigs.
“Strategic research investments like this help ensure Canadian producers have access to innovative tools and solutions to address priority health challenges in the barn,” SIP chair Mark Ferguson said in a release.
The funding for Niu’s project comes via SIP’s Advancing Swine Research Call for Proposals, which backs one- to three-year projects and runs until 2028. SIP said its support for this project is expected to mobilize up to $419,580 in total funding for it.
The U of Calgary project “reflects the type of collaborative, forward-looking research we aim to support” through the call for proposals, SIP general manager Daniel Ramage said in the same release.
