“At the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Ronald D. Schultz has been studying vaccines and their effects on companion and farm animals for decades. Current research efforts include the development of plants engineered to produce virus proteins that are not infectious but which may be used as an oral rabies or canine distemper vaccine.

    Another aim is to develop a canine distemper vaccine which causes little skin reaction, but strong immunity by means of a DNA vaccine. A DNA vaccine consists of many copies of a short segment of viral genetic material, which is injected under the skin where it is taken up by cells in the immediate vicinity of inoculation. Those cells then produce proteins encoded by the viral DNA and stimulate a cellular immune response. Only a short segment of DNA is injected, so the vaccine has no potential to cause disease. It does not need to be administered with aluminum or other ‘adjuvants’ so it should cause less local tissue reaction.

    A third project in progress is an examination of the immune cells (lymphocytes and macrophages) that appear at feline vaccine sites and which occur around vaccine-associated sarcomas. Proteins expressed on the cells’ surface and the chemicals (cytokines) produced by those cells are being evaluated, compared, and the effect of select cytokines will be tested by administering them to normal feline cells in tissue culture. The purpose of this study is to learn why some cats produce sarcomas in response to the chronic inflammation associated with inoculation of certain substances in order to prevent or treat the phenomenon in the future. “

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