- March 04, 2026
- By Kimbra Cutlip
A $2 million award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will fund a project by researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) in Baltimore to develop and test a vaccine to protect chickens against avian influenza H5N1.
With funding through USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Andrew Broadbent, assistant professor in the Department of Animal and Avian Sciences at UMD, and Lynda Coughlan, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at UMSOM, are developing a vaccine that uses nonreplicating adenovirus as a delivery platform.
The researchers demonstrated that this approach has the potential for success with the help of a seed grant from the MPowering the State initiative, a strategic partnership between UMD and UMB to boost research, innovation and economic development for Maryland.
The ongoing outbreak of H5N1 bird flu is widely considered the most significant animal health event in U.S. history, having infected more than 170 million poultry, disrupted the food supply and led to increased costs for farmers and high egg prices for consumers. Though poultry vaccines are available in other countries, all have drawbacks for managing the rapidly evolving H5 viruses, from poor protection against emerging development to difficulty of updating for new strains.
In their initial MPower-funded study, Broadbent and Coughland showed that nonreplicating adenovirus-vectored vaccines generate strong immune responses in chickens, with antibodies recognizing diverse H5 strains—evidence of broad protective potential. What’s more, the vaccines are stable and effective at room temperature and can be easily modified to protect against emerging strains.
The current award will build on this foundation by expanding antigen production, further refining vaccine candidates to address newly emerging H5 genotypes, and testing different routes of inoculation and doses.