Developing Novel Detection and Therapeutic Methods to improve Viral Enteritis Research in Cattle: BCoV as a Model

Viral enteritis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality of cattle. In particular, diarrhea is the most important cause of death in young calves worldwide and therefore poses a threat to animal health and leads to severe economic losses. Among major viral pathogens known to cause diarrhea in cattle are rotaviruses (BRoV), coronaviruses (BCoV) and noroviruses (BNoV). In many cases, co-infection of a complex community of pathogens is observed, which makes it difficult to determine the primary pathogen. Moreover, some of these pathogens, despite many attempts, could not grow and replicate using in vitro systems, which affects the ability to perform analysis and surveillance of these pathogens and to determine their role in gastroenteritis of cattle. Therefore, there is a need to develop new tools to study viral pathogens that cause enteritis in cattle. In particular, the establishment of a permissive cell line to support the replication of enteric viruses is required. These tools will enable us to improve our detection and surveillance of these pathogens. In addition, we will be able to characterize local variants and to develop advanced molecular and serological methods, which, will potentially help us to develop novel therapeutic agents and vaccines.
Based on our previous results and data with BCoV, we will use BCoV as a virus model for other viral pathogens that cause gastroenteritis in cattle. We believe that by studying BCoV interactions with its host we will be able to uncover host receptors and factors that could contribute to our efforts to develop novel methods to explore various enteritis viruses