"Using Immunology and Genomics to Improve Swine Health"

Joan Lunney, Ph.D.

Research Leader of the Immunology and Disease Resistance Laboratory
USDA-ARS
Beltsville, Maryland

Building 003 Auditorium
February 25, 2003
10:30 AM

Dr. Lunney is an internationally recognized authority on pig immunology and genomics. She started her pig work characterizing the proteins encoded by the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of swine, the swine leukocyte antigen (SLA) complex. These genes determine tissue graft acceptance/rejection. She characterized panels of monoclonal antibodies (mAb) reactive against specific SLA gene products and developed the first panel of mAb against specific swine immune cell subsets. Those mAb are now international reference standards for porcine immunology studies and are used in almost every study of swine disease, vaccine and organ transplant responses.

Dr. Lunney was an early proponent of identifying the complex genetic and immune regulators controlling disease resistance in pigs. Working with teams of scientists, she developed molecular and immunologic reagents to quantitate expression of the immune regulators such as cytokines, both at the mRNA and protein levels, and protocols for testing recombinant swine cytokines as immune enhancers. She initiated the use of SLA defined miniature pigs to assess genetic control of disease resistance, focusing at first on the MHC/SLA genes and parasitic infections, and later expanding to functional genomics and innate disease resistance. With SLA defined minipigs, and using cellular and immunologic techniques, she led studies that mapped resistance to Trichinella spiralis infections to the SLA complex and a second set of genes.

Dr. Lunney's research accomplishments are documented in 140 publications. She has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international scientific meetings and served on editorial boards for the Journal of Immunology, Animal Genetics, Animal Biotechnology and Veterinary Immunology and Immunopathology. In 1998 she was elected as international Chair for veterinary immunologists. She served on the USDA national panels that initially developed the U.S. animal genome research program in 1989 and that set priorities for microbial genomics in 2000. In 1995 she was selected to serve on the National Research Council Institute of Medicine's Committee: Xenograft Transplantation: Ethical Issues and Public Policy. For her seminal research in swine immunology she was selected as the 1996 American Association of Veterinary Immunologist's Distinguished Veterinary Immunologist. In 1998 she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.