Objective:
1. Develop novel approaches to inducting mucosal immune responses to Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus (FMDV) vaccines with the capacity to cross-neutralize a broader array of virus sub-types. 2. Determination of Classical Swine Fever Virus (CSFV) genetic determinants of virulence, immunogenicity, and antigenicity. 3. Develop and validate grating coupled surface Plasmon resonance imaging multiplexed microarray biosensor platform for the rapid detection of FMDV and CSFV, and the characterization of host responses to each pathogen.

Approach:
1. Development of novel approaches to induction of mucosal immune responses will be accomplished by; a.) evaulation of the efficacy of mucosal adjuvants, delivered via the replication-defective human adenovirus 5 (hAd5) vector system, co-administered with the hAd5-FMD vaccine, for augmenting protective immunity following intranasal administration to pigs, b.) assessment of cross-neutralization and cross-protection affored by capsid-based vaccines engineered with chimeric VP1 G-H loops bearing immunogenic or toleragenic epitopes to broaden the specificity of the vaccine. 2. Determination of CSFV genetic determinants will be achieved by; a.) evaluation of the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of CSFV glycoproteins modified at putative glycosylation sites, b.) evaluation of the role of non-structural proteins in CSFV virulence. 3. The multiplex biosensor system will be a microarray-based bioassay platform that specifically captures individual analytes from a host samples. The samples will be quantified and evaluated for viral FADs.