Location: Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research
Project Number: 5030-32000-225-013-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2020
End Date: May 31, 2025
Objective:
Our overall goal is to utilize innate training as an approach to enhance disease resistance in a manner that is highly relevant to both agriculture and biomedical research. The goal of the proposed research is to identify the utility of BCG-induced training in neonatal animals (Aim 1), as our labs have already demonstrated BCG-induced innate training both in vitro and in vivo with pigs and cattle. Better understanding the molecular mechanisms of innate training will lead to further approaches to reach our overall goal, and research in Aims 2 and 3 are designed for this purpose. The approach is innovative in the use of neonatal animals and cells, which is a target age for enhancing disease resistance in humans and food animals, as well as testing of relevant disease models.
Approach:
Aim 1: Evaluate BCG as immunomodulator to limit disease in juvenile cattle and swine (a) Demonstrate efficacy against influenza A virus and Salmonella in pigs (b) Demonstrate efficacy against respiratory syncytial virus and Pasteurella multocida in cattle; Aim 2: Elucidate the molecular mechanism(s) of BCG-induced cellular innate training; and Aim 3: Identify the mycobacterial components that induce innate training.
