TY - JOUR AU - Boodhoo, Nitish AU - Gurung, Angila AU - Sharif, Shayan AU - Behboudi, Shahriar PY - 2016 DA - 2016/11/28 TI - Marek’s disease in chickens: a review with focus on immunology JO - Veterinary Research SP - 119 VL - 47 IS - 1 AB - Marek’s disease (MD), caused by Marek’s disease virus (MDV), is a commercially important neoplastic disease of poultry which is only controlled by mass vaccination. Importantly, vaccines that can provide sterile immunity and inhibit virus transmission are lacking; such that vaccines are only capable of preventing neuropathy, oncogenic disease and immunosuppression, but are unable to prevent MDV transmission or infection, leading to emergence of increasingly virulent pathotypes. Hence, to address these issues, developing more efficacious vaccines that induce sterile immunity have become one of the important research goals for avian immunologists today. MDV shares very close genomic functional and structural characteristics to most mammalian herpes viruses such as herpes simplex virus (HSV). MD also provides an excellent T cell lymphoma model for gaining insights into other herpesvirus-induced oncogenesis in mammals and birds. For these reasons, we need to develop an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the host-viral interaction and host immunity against MD. Similarly, the underlying genetic variation within different chicken lines has a major impact on the outcome of infection. In this review article, we aim to investigate the pathogenesis of MDV infection, host immunity to MD and discuss areas of research that need to be further explored. SN - 1297-9716 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13567-016-0404-3 DO - 10.1186/s13567-016-0404-3 ID - Boodhoo2016 ER -