USDA Awards Cornell University $642,000 to Develop Swine Influenza Vaccines
USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced a $13-million investment in research that explores novel therapies and prevention strategies for animal diseases that cost the agricultural industry billions worldwide. One of the 24 grants announced will help develop more effective vaccines for swine influenza.
Swine influenza virus causes significant economic losses to the swine industry every year. Cornell University received $642,000 to develop more effective vaccines to protect against this virus that is highly prevalent in the U.S. The complexity of this disease makes it challenging to develop effective vaccines, USDA said in a release.
The goal of Cornell's study is to develop broadly protective SIV vaccine platforms for swine. The objectives include defining the protective efficacy of consensus- and chimeric-HA-based vaccine platforms against diverse swine influenza A viruses. In addition, the study seeks to define and characterize cross-protective effector immune responses elicited by immunization with broadly reactive vaccine designs.
The University of Minnesota also received a $500,000 grant to study how novel influenza viruses emerge, persist and transmit in pigs and how population dynamics and epidemiological factors affect influenza virus emergence, evolution and its control. Their research will focus on identifying and characterizing reassortant viruses in pigs of known age, immune status and production stage. They will identify which pig populations are more likely to drive reassortment events, and whether type and level of immunity contributes to reassortment, and whether certain reassortants are more likely to persist in a population and transmit further.
“The health of agricultural animals is critical to ensuring the U.S. maintains a safe and adequate food supply,” NIFA Director Carrie Castille said in a release. “The research we are funding with these grants will create new knowledge and spur discoveries that enhance production efficiency and improve animal health and welfare.”
The grants are part of NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative’s (AFRI) Diseases of Agricultural Animals program area priority. They will support projects at 17 universities focusing on disease prevention, vaccine development and management strategies to maintain healthy agricultural animals.
“The knowledge created by this research promises to aid farmers and ranchers in improving animals’ resistance to disease while also catalyzing the development of novel prevention and treatment methods,” USDA said in a release.
NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education and Extension across the nation to make transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges. NIFA supports initiatives that ensure the long-term viability of agriculture and applies an integrated approach to ensure that groundbreaking discoveries in agriculture-related sciences and technologies reach the people who can put them into practice. In FY2021, NIFA’s total investment was $1.96 billion.
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