Al-Qadisiyah Journal of Veterinary Medicine Sciences

Advances, Limitations, and Future Directions of Subunit Vaccines Against FMD Disease / A Review

Document Type : Review Paper

Authors

Zahraa Ahmed Abdul Sada 1
Mohammed Alsaadi 2

1 University of Al-Qadisiyah, College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Internal and Preventive Veterinary Medicine, Iraq

2 Department of Internal and preventive medicine, College of veterinary medicine, University of Al-Qadisiyah , Al-Diwaniyah ,Iraq

https://doi.org/10.29079/qjvms.2026.170015.1173
Abstract
Foot -and-mouth disease (FMD) is a transboundary viral disease that is highly contagious and seriously affects the livestock productivity, food security, and international trade. Even though the traditional inactivated vaccines have long been used over decades, their shortcomings such as relatively short immunity, biosecurity concerns during manufacturing, antigenic breakdown, and the lack of cross-serotype coverage limit their efficacy in the long term. The difficulties have led to the creation of subunit vaccines as the safer and more carefully designed alternatives.Subunit vaccines are, first of all, designed based on structural capsid proteins, in particular, VP1, or are prepared as virus-like particles (VLPs) to resemble the native virion structure, but without infectious genetic material. Immunogenicity has been significantly increased with the development of novel systems of recombinant expression, multi-epitope designing techniques based on immunoinformatics, nanoparticle delivery systems, and optimization of adjuvant.Though pre-clinical results have been encouraging, some problems have been noted including incomplete cross-protection and small scale field validation. Further development of multivalent design, antigen stabilisation, and new delivery methods is needed in order to attain sustainable and successful control of FMD

Keywords

FMDV
subunit vaccine
VLPs
multi-epitope vaccine
Al-Qadisiyah Journal of Veterinary Medicine Sciences
Volume 25, Issue 1
May 2026
Pages 148-160