Location: Exotic & Emerging Avian Viral Diseases Research
Project Number: 6040-32000-082-009-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 13, 2025
End Date: Aug 12, 2028
Objective:
Objective 1. Develop improved detection tools and apply in Newcastle disease virus (NDV) surveillance to identify and evaluate the emergence of new NDV variants.
Objective 2. Develop biological systems to assess and predict the evolution and pathogenesis of NDV
Objective 3. Develop new intervention platform through better understanding of host and NDV interaction and identification of protective immune correlates
Approach:
Objective 1. To improve next generation sequencing (NGS) efficiency and coverage, cDNA amplification and sequencing methodology will be optimized using multiple approaches including the design of NDV-specific tilling primers. Newly established NGS protocols will be applied in clinical, research and surveillance samples collected from wild birds and poultry in the US and abroad. In combination with bioinformatic analysis, databases will be established to expand the knowledge of NDV epidemiology, evolution and emergence of new variants.
Objective 2: To investigate potential route of NDV spread onto poultry farms, both in vitro and in vivo experimental systems will be established to monitor the replication efficiency and adaptive changes of field isolates and wild bird origin isolates in different host systems. The study will also include production of viral surface proteins and development of in vitro assay to assess tissue specificity and host tropism of reference and new variants. The obtained genetic and biological data will be used for risk assessment and develop predictive models to prevent outbreaks.
Objective 3: To develop intervention strategies, protective immunity will be analyzed in detail using different immunological methods and transcriptome analysis. In addition, metagenomic-based approaches will be incorporated to better understand the microbiome and multi-faceted nature of protective immunity. Based on the immunologic, transcriptomic and metagenomic data, prevention and intervention strategies in combination with matching immunological methods for monitoring will be selected for recommendation.