British scientists have created an entirely synthetic vaccine which may combat foot and mouth disease.

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The FMD vaccine was created as a prototype for a series of synthetic vaccines which are safer to use than those relying on actual viruses. Scientists from the Universities of Reading and Oxford contributed to work on the new vaccine along with other institutes.

The scientists explained the magnitude of their breakthrough, as, by creating a completely synthetic vaccine, there is now no way a virus could return to its infectious form, which could potentially happen with some current vaccines. They hope to be able to use the technique to combat other viruses in the same family, including polio and hand, foot and mouth disease, which affect humans.

The vaccine uses a synthetic viral shell, but without the RNA genetic material a live virus would use to replicate itself. Researchers at the Pirbright Institute, who also worked on the new method, explained that the "tiny protein shells designed to trigger optimum immune response [mean the process] doesn't rely on growing live infectious virus and is therefore much safer to produce."

The scientists argue that the new process would be more stable, and could potentially eliminate the problems of differentiating between immunised and infected animals, which hindered efforts to combat the food and mouth outbreak in Britain in 2001. They also said it could be safely stored in a wider range of temperatures, reducing the need for refrigeration.

The 2001 FMD outbreak in the UK saw 2,000 cases on farms throughout the country and resulted in parts of the countryside effectively shutting down, as public rights of way were closed in an attempt to contain the disease. Over 10 million sheep and cattle were killed as a result of the outbreak, which is estimated to have cost the UK a total of £8 billion.

Oxford University Structural Biology Professor David Stuart, went into more detail about the new vaccine, "What we have achieved here is close to the holy grail of foot-and-mouth vaccines. Unlike the traditional vaccines, there is no chance that the empty shell vaccine could revert to an infectious form.

"The technology should be transferable to other viruses from the same family, such as poliovirus and hand foot and mouth disease, a human virus which is currently endemic in South-East Asia."

He explained that, as a result of the groundbreaking scientific techniques used by the researchers, "We were able to visualise something a billion times smaller than a pinhead and further enhance the design atom by atom of the empty shells. Through information gained at Diamond, we also verified that these have essentially the same structure as the native virus to ensure an appropriate immune response."

However, though their synthetic vaccine represents a milestone in preventative medicine, the researchers acknowledge that more work must still be done on the new vaccine and that it will be years before the new model is available for use.

Foot-and-mouth disease is one of the most economically important diseases in livestock worldwide. Approximately 3 to 4 billion doses of the current FMD vaccine are administered each year.