With nearly $5.5 million in new funding through the USDA’s Innovation Grand Challenge, CVM researchers are expanding their efforts to mitigate the impacts of bird flu on Minnesota farms and the national food supply
If you’ve noticed the rollercoaster price of eggs at the grocery store lately, you’ve felt the impact of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Since 2022, the disease has cost the U.S. economy billions and led to the loss of millions of birds.
The University of Minnesota’s (UMN) College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) was awarded four major grants totaling nearly $5.5 million through the USDA’s HPAI Poultry Innovation Grand Challenge.This national initiative is a high-stakes sprint to find innovative ways to stop the virus, protect the poultry industry, and stabilize food prices for American families. Two additional grants were awarded to UMN researchers in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS).
"Minnesota is a leader in poultry production, and these awards recognize that our researchers are at the forefront of the effort to end this crisis," says Laura Molgaard, dean of CVM.
While the challenge of avian influenza remains complex, these projects are designed to give veterinarians and policymakers a more sophisticated toolkit for managing future outbreaks. Here’s a look at how CVM researchers are tackling the problem from multiple angles.
One of the most significant hurdles in fighting HPAI is the virus’s ability to mutate quickly, often outpacing traditional vaccines. A nearly $2 million project, led by Yuying Liang and Hinh Ly, aims to close that gap. They are building upon a breakthrough originally pioneered in their own University of Minnesota laboratories: a unique virus vector.
“Think of this vector as a delivery vehicle—a harmless, engineered virus used to carry protective instructions directly to the bird’s immune system,” Ly says; “And because it was designed to be highly flexible and due to the inherent nature of this virus, it can provide broad, long-lasting protection and can be rapidly re-engineered in response to emergence of new strains of bird flu.”
This new grant provides the critical bridge to make that technology a reality on the farm, allowing them to load the viral vector delivery vehicle with specific defenses against current H5N1 strains and conduct the real-world testing required for USDA licensing. This includes determining the best age to vaccinate chicks and developing a specialized test so inspectors can distinguish between vaccinated birds and naturally infected ones—a game-changer for the industry, potentially allowing farms to stay operational during outbreaks rather than facing mass shutdowns.
Because the HPAI virus is so aggressive, current biosecurity protocols often require the depopulation of every bird on an infected site to stop the spread. While effective for containment, this method is a blunt instrument that leaves farmers with few alternatives and carries a heavy economic and emotional toll.
The Secure Food System team, including several CVM faculty members, is leading a $2 million initiative to provide a more surgical, barn-by-barn alternative to stamping out the virus. By identifying the specific pathways the virus uses to travel from one barn to another on a single property, this research will help producers create "firewalls" between buildings.
To turn this vision into reality, the team is developing sophisticated risk assessments specifically tailored for turkey and egg production premises. By modeling exactly how the virus maneuvers through a farm’s unique environment, researchers can provide producers with a precise roadmap for how to minimize its impact on the farm. If the spread can be stopped at the barn door, thousands of healthy birds could be saved, reducing the emotional and financial toll on farmers and keeping the food supply stable.
While we know the virus can travel through the air, exactly how it survives the trip remains a mystery. In a collaboration with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Pennsylvania State University, Carol Cardona of the Secure Food Systems team is also investigating the role of "infectious dust."
In this $690,000 project, CVM researchers are testing whether common materials—such as feathers, dander, or even pond sediment—act as protective shells for the virus, allowing it to stay viable in the environment for 10 days or more. By simulating various air quality levels in the lab, the team hopes to pinpoint how this dust moves between farms, leading to better air filtration and environmental strategies for the industry.
In another innovative leap for vaccine technology, an $811,000 project led by Zheng Xing is looking at a bird’s own biology for the answer. This team is developing a vaccine delivered through the gut using a phage—a specialized type of virus that only infects bacteria, not animals or humans. In this case, the phage acts like a microscopic delivery drone. It enters the bird’s digestive tract and "plugs into" Lactococcus lactis, a healthy probiotic bacterium that could be transiently living in the poultry gut. This effectively turns the bird’s own natural bacteria into tiny, internal vaccine factories that stimulate a powerful immune response right where many infections begin—at the level of the mucosal membranes, or the lining of the organs and digestive tract.
This two-in-one approach is designed to be both highly effective and incredibly practical for the farm. Because the vaccine targets the gut, it could be administered easily through food or water, bypassing the need for individual injections in large flocks.
It thus offers a robust layer of defense that is also significantly easier and more cost-effective to administer to large flocks. Developed in partnership with Greater San Diego Biologicals, the project holds a non-profit vision to ensure the technology is accessible to everyone, from commercial producers to backyard hobbyists.
“Control of avian influenza depends on widespread use of effective means, including vaccination,” Xing notes. “We expect the vaccines developed with this effort could be accessible to all, not only to commercial companies, but also to small farms, backyard flocks and live bird markets. That's the way to block the transmission of the HPAI, and vaccines at lower cost could be more effective.”
From the labs in Saint Paul to the halls of Washington, D.C., the impact of this $5.5 million investment will be felt across the poultry landscape. By combining high-tech vaccine platforms with boots-on-the-ground biosecurity, CVM researchers are building a more sophisticated toolkit to ensure the future of poultry is safer and more sustainable for producers and consumers alike.
