Monitoring the performance of foot‐and‐mouth disease vaccines prepared against local strains in the face of antigenic evolution in the field

National programs for foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) eradication includes the use of vaccination; Turkey which is endemic to FMD virus (FMDV) (except for the Thrace region) and there is a risk of incursion of exotic strains from eastern borders. In 2015, a devastating outbreak was caused by the A/ASIA/G‐VII (G‐VII) lineage, which led to the inclusion of a new vaccine strain (A/TUR/15) derived from this lineage in 3 months. Although most of the cattle population in Turkey was then immunized with A/TUR/15 (vaccine coverage: 92.8%), the G‐VII lineage continued to cause outbreaks in the field despite the evidence of protection observed with A/TUR/15 in in vivo and in vitro tests. When G‐VII field strains were examined, changes in their genomes were detected. As the lineage appeared to be evolving, an unconventional vaccination strategy was adapted which changed the vaccine strain with new variants of G‐VII according to antigenic evolution. To assess the suitability of candidate vaccine strains derived from the variants of the G‐VII lineage, three viral candidates were assessed (A/TUR/15, A/TUR/16 and A/TUR/17) by in vitro virus neutralization tests for r₁ vaccine matching and in vivo heterologous challenge tests. Although all three vaccine strains were antigenically well matched with each other and other G‐VII field viruses, due to continues outbreaks the vaccine strain was changed three times in 20 months from A/TUR/15 (Dec 2015) to A/TUR/16 (Dec 2016) and then to A/TUR/17 (Aug 2017). With this strategy serotype A has not been observed in the field since January 2018. This study highlights the importance of adapting the vaccine strains according to antigenic evolution as this could be a valuable combat strategy in endemic countries, rather than using well‐known vaccine strain and relying only on the relationship coefficient (r₁) value.