Press Release: A new louping ill vaccine – can you help us bring a new vaccine to market? 8 Apr 2025, 7:39 am

Moredun have developed a new generation vaccine against louping ill virus (LIV) in sheep. Although this tick-borne viral disease can infect many species, including cattle, horses, dogs and humans, it is particularly devastating to sheep and red grouse. Since the withdrawal of the previous LIV vaccine in 2017 and the increase in tick prevalence and spread, LIV has been increasing and moving into new areas. This has caused the sheep industry huge problems, as where the virus is first encountered sheep flocks can be seriously affected, losing up to 50% of their animals.

Professor Tom McNeilly, Scientific Director and CEO of Moredun said,

“We are delighted to support sheep farmers with the development of a new LIV vaccine. LIV can be a devastating disease, causing many sheep farmers to struggle with high losses. Moredun produced the very first LIV vaccine in the 1930s, followed by the more recent one in the 1970’s, so it was very important to us to step up and develop a new generation vaccine to improve sheep health and welfare, and support livestock farming businesses.”

The new vaccine has been shown to be highly effective in research trials and now we are working with partner, Kernfarm, to bring the vaccine to market, so that it is available to the sheep farmers across the UK in areas where it is desperately needed.

Dr David Griffiths, Lead Scientist, Moredun Research Institute reported,

“The new vaccine has been highly successful in preventing the clinical signs of louping ill in sheep in our experimental trials and in particular in limiting infection of the brain. Moving the vaccine to commercial scale production will provide a valuable tool for controlling the disease on farms.”

Tim van Rijn, Director and Co-Founder at Kernfarm,

“We at Kernfarm are very excited and proud to help get this much needed vaccine available to sheep farmers. Kernfarm is a firm believer in forming partnerships to ensure vets and farmers receive the best solutions for their livestock.”

As the usual route to market through pharmaceutical companies was not possible, due to the niche UK market for this vaccine, we have had to look at other ways of doing this involving industry funding. This route to commercialisation is a novel one for us and will take place over three sequential phases.

Descriptions of each stage are available at https://moredun.org.uk/donate-louping-ill

If you are able, please consider making this vaccine a reality and donate to the first phase of the commercialisation process, which involves moving the vaccine production to a commercial manufacturer and scaling up production.

For further information and images please contact Beth Wells: beth.wells@moredun.ac.uk

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