The need for improved vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) continues to be the viral disease posing the greatest economic threat to agriculture. An unusually fast replication rate, extreme transmissibility, broad species tropism and antigenic diversity have made its etiologic agent, FMD virus, a difficult pathogen to defeat. Over the last 70 years, use of an inactivated virus vaccine has played a key role in disease control and eradication was possible in certain regions of the world. However, a rapidly changing environment, increased trade, population growth, international travel and migration, contribute to disease resurgence, challenging the capabilities of any available vaccine. Here we review the current knowledge on FMD vaccines and provide an outlook of novel technologies as possible improved alternatives for disease control and eradication.