The Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine is home to the new Animal Health and Agro-/Bio-Defense (AHAD) Program through funding from the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS).
The program will focus primarily on diseases affecting economically important domestic animals that pose a threat to public health or impact national security and economic stability locally, nationally and globally.
The partnership was made possible through a collaborative non-assistance cooperative agreement with the USDA-ARS. Initial funding to Auburn is $647,529, with planned funding of more than $2.5 million in the next five years.
Initially, research in the AHAD space will involve a collaborative partnership with scientists in the USDA-ARS through the U.S. National Poultry Research Center in Athens, Georgia. This will allow subject matter experts at Auburn to take advantage of the expertise of peers in the federal space and will enable access to state-of-the-art biosafety level-3 facilities necessary to safely advance solutions for animal health and agro-/bio-defense challenges.
According to Dr. Frank “Skip” Bartol, Alumni Professor and associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Veterinary Medicine—who is spearheading AHAD along with Dr. Paul Walz, head of the Department of Pathobiology—Auburn’s AHAD program will be positioned to serve as a southern regional node in the Coalition for Epi Response Engagement Science, or CERES, that now includes primarily universities in the Midwest and West.
The AHAD/ARS partnership will advance the education and training of next-generation scientists, filling a critical need in this important domain, according to Bartol.
The newly established AHAD program complements and extends ongoing advanced training of next-generation scientists at Auburn who will define the workforce at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, or NBAF, soon to be opened in Manhattan, Kansas, through the USDA-Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Scientist Training Program.
The NBAF will be the first laboratory facility in the U.S. to provide maximum biocontainment (BSL-4) space to enable study of high-consequence zoonotic diseases affecting large livestock and will support pilot-scale development of vaccines and other medical countermeasures designed to mitigate threats to agrosecurity.
“As part of that nationwide effort, Auburn’s AHAD program will expand the mission and capacity of the College of Veterinary Medicine’s existing animal health research to include research complementary to the goals of the USDA and other federal agencies charged to ensure national security and public safety,” Bartol said. “It will work closely with partners in the allied federal space and will leverage the capabilities of a National Animal Health Laboratory Network-supported program established at the Alabama State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, adjacent to the veterinary campus.
AHAD will focus on the biodefense mission, consistent with four strategic areas of the National Biodefense Strategy as identified by the USDA-ARS. Those areas include predicting the emergence of pathogens in livestock and associated wildlife; understanding the ecology of exotic, emerging and reemerging pathogens; incident response research; and the development of veterinary medical countermeasures for early detection, prevention and treatment of foreign and emerging animal diseases.
Source: Auburn University
