Vaccines R&D & Vaccination

Isabelle Lesponne is a Veterinarian, who has graduated from the National Veterinary School of Toulouse, France, in 2001, with last year being dedicated to studying more into depths small animals’ medicine and surgery. After working as a general practitioner for six years in several clinics, she moved to the industry world and joined Merial Company in 2007, focusing on external parasites, osteoarthritis, along with vaccination and infectious diseases. She joined Royal Canin in 2011, to work on Research & Development of nutritional solutions for osteoarthritic and pruritic pets. She is now Scientific Support specialist for Royal Canin Dermatology nutritional ranges, passionate about food-allergy topic, involved in some publications and congress lectures focusing on the quality of pet food cross-contamination risk management.

The diagnosis of AFR (adverse food reactions) in dogs and cats cannot be done throughout blood or saliva tests, unreliable to date. Consequently, it has to be based upon the clinical response to an adequate food trial, with an elimination phase (several weeks on a new food), followed by a re-challenge (re-introduction of the suspected food or ingredient). To be reliable, the food used for elimination trials must be carefully selected (formulated with either a novel protein source the pet has never been exposed to, and/or with a protein being hydrolysed enough), and free of ancillary protein. Recently, the detection of undeclared ingredients in some commercial AFR-diets raised concerns. To insure the absence of cross-contamination in commercial diets, three key elements are required: fully characterized raw materials entering the formula, fit-to-purpose industrial equipment’s and cleaning processes, and the analytical means to verify the absence of ancillary protein in the food. For the later, several methods exist, such as electronic microscopy, ELISA or PCR analyses, with various levels of precision. It was shown recently that cooked-meat ELISA method could not allow drawing conclusions in pet foods containing soy hydrolysate as protein source. A DNA testing strategy was defined and implemented for commercial foods formulated with an extensively hydrolysed protein and recommended for AFR diagnosis and management in pets. This method is based upon the measurement of total DNA, and PCR as potential second step, and then conversion to protein level thanks to dedicated calibration curves. These AFR-diets are then released when their “ancillary protein level” is below a conformity threshold defined thanks to a preclinical trial. Protein identifications and qualifications can also be performed using chromatographic, electrophoretic and proteomic techniques. Along with ingredient quality and efficient factory cleaning, adequate analyses contribute to guarantee the clinical efficacy of commercial AFR diets.