Animal health vaccine manufacturer Medgene is now ready to address three critical livestock disease challenges - avian influenza virus H5N1, porcine circovirus PCV-4 and avian metapneumovirus aMPV. The Brookings, South Dakota firm only needs USDA permission to add the vaccines to their product line and begin distribution.

“Over the last 30 years, we've realized that you don't need the immune response against the whole virus. The virus interacts based on specific things on the outside of the virus that allow it to stick to the cells of the target and get in. So instead of doing that, all we want to do is block the ability of this thing to get into my cells and to cause disease,” says Alan Young, a professor of veterinary medicine at South Dakota State University and the inventor of Medgene Technology.

“If we mount an immune response against these things on the outside that allow it to do that, the ‘velcro’ in the virus, then we can block infection. And that's what we do. We don't target the whole virus. We know what is important on this virus that allows it to cause infection and we stimulated immune response against it. That is the basis of what we call subunit vaccines. That's what we do with our prescription platform.”