Winners of the 2014 European PRRS Research Award announced

• Boehringer Ingelheim funds three research projects against swine disease PRRS with €75,000 total
• Three winners were chosen out of more than 30 high quality proposals
• Next call for submission starts in February 2015

Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health provides three grants of €25,000 each to fund research projects that generate new and practical information to better understand the devastating swine disease PRRS (Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome). With the 2014 European PRRS Research Award the company reinforces its commitment to support applied research for the improved control of PRRS in Europe.

The 2014 European PRRS research awards were recently presented to the successful investigators. Three winning projects were chosen out of more than 30 high quality proposals from swine experts and scientists from all across Europe, covering a wide variety of problems and topics related to PRRS. The independent review board selected the following projects to be awarded:

• Determination of the frequency of animals with broadly cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies in the sow population (Dr. Cinta Prieto, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
• Investigation of the duration of viremia and protection after simultaneous vaccination with PRRS MLV against both PRRSV type 1 and type 2 (Dr. Charlotte Sonne Kristensen, Pig Research Centre, Danish Agriculture and Food Council, Denmark)
• Interference of Maternally Derived Antibodies with PRRS vaccine in piglets (Dr. Nicolas Rose, French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety, France)

Swine experts and scientists from Europe and the US participated in the award ceremony, which took place in the Boehringer Ingelheim headquarters in Ingelheim, Germany.
The European PRRS Research Award 2015 call for submission will be opened on February 1st, 2015.