Studying classical swine fever virus: Making the best of a bad virus

•We review recent advances in understanding CSFV virulence and genomic features.•CSFV protein function has been studied with several reverse genetic systems.•Further work is needed on the CSFV life cycle and effective clinical treatments.

Classical swine fever (CSF) is a highly contagious and often fatal disease that affects domestic pigs and wild boars. Outbreak of CSF can cause heavy economic losses to the pig industry. The strategies to prevent, control and eradicate CSF disease are based on containing the disease through a systematic prophylactic vaccination policy and a non-vaccination stamping-out policy. The quest for prevention, control and eradication of CSF has moved research forward in academia and industry, and has produced noticeable advances in understanding fundamental aspects of the virus replication mechanisms, virulence, and led to the development of new vaccines. In this review we summarize recent progress in CSFV epidemiology, molecular features of the genome and proteome, the molecular basis of virulence, and the development of anti-virus technologies.