Bettina Wagner, assistant professor of population medicine and diagnostic sciences and a veterinary immunologist in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, has been awarded $344,000 over three years as part of a $2.1 million U.S. Department of Agriculture project involving more than 40 scientists. Cornell will be one of the three core facilities generating tools that improve vaccine development and tests for infectious animal diseases in cattle, poultry, horses, swine, catfish and salmonids that threaten agriculture and the food supply.

The mammalian immune system includes receptor proteins that sit on the surface of cells and recognize such foreign structures as viral or bacterial components. This recognition activates the immune system to secrete antibodies or provide cells that attack the invaders. Wagner's role in the project is to use a new expression system that she created in 2003 at Cornell that can easily develop the receptor or cell surface proteins for each of the targeted species. These so-called reagents can help characterize immune responses and be used to develop potent vaccines and treatments for animal infectious diseases.

The principal investigator for the project as a whole is Cynthia Baldwin of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The project is designed to accelerate the characterization and treatment of a range of ailments, including mad cow disease and avian influenza.