History of MDA
Timeline
2004 - JDIP-CAP consortium formed - grant awarded
2008 - JDIP-CAP Phase II grant renewed - membership growth, international collaborations
2010 - TB CAP consortium formed
2012 - Mycobacterial Diseases of Animals Multi-state Initiative (NE 1201) formed
Brief History
Despite the considerable importance of JD and TB to US and international agriculture and livestock health, as well as the regulatory and economic costs associated with these diseases, there have been no multi-state initiatives that address either these major mycobacterial diseases of animals.
The origins of MDA were in the USDA-NRI JDIP program (2004). During the fall of 2004, the USDA-CSREES-NRI’s Coordinated Agricultural Projects (CAP) helped bring together leading scientists in the field of JD to form a comprehensive, multi-institutional, interdisciplinary Johne’s Disease Integrated Program for research, education, and extension, or JDIP.
JDIP was the first animal health CAP grant awarded by the USDA, and we started with a team of approximately 70 scientists from two-dozen leading academic and government institutions in the US, who represented the diverse disciplines of microbiology, immunology, pathology, molecular and cellular biology, genomics, proteomics, epidemiology, clinical veterinary medicine, public health, extension, and public policy. Since inception, membership in JDIP grew to more than 220, and the program became international in scope.
Based on the success of the program, JDIP was renewed in 2008, and is currently in the final year of the second Phase.
During these two phases, JDIP investigators have made considerable progress in this field through the creation and maintenance of functional and highly productive integrated research teams and core facilities that are interdisciplinary and multi-institutional. In brief, the CAP program has enabled JD research, education, and extension to rapidly move forward in a manner that would not be possible through traditional funding mechanisms from the USDA.
In particular, the founding and continued support of JDIP has enabled the community, for the first time since JD was described more than a century ago, to develop an integrated and coordinated program with a focus on developing a strong translational pipeline of new diagnostic tests, vaccine candidates, strategies to manage, prevent and control the disease, and the formulation of an outstanding education and training program.
The TB-CAP consortium was formed in 2010. Led by Professors Paul Coussens from Michigan State University and Scott Wells from the University of Minnesota, a group of investigators, many of whom are also members of the JDIP consortium, developed a coordinated research, education and extension project for the study of bovine TB (TB-CAP). Even though TB-CAP was eventually not selected for funding, it provided a strong framework and foundation from which to build the MDA. Indeed, many of the investigators that participated in both JDIP and TB-CAP are key participants and co-founders of the MDA multi-state initiative.
MDA was born in 2012. The MDA multi-state initiative was organized and approved by the USDA as NE1201 to expand the focus through the inclusion of bovine TB and to continue to leverage the financial and scientific resources even after the completion of the second Phase of the program.