The research ex- plores how com- pounds secreted by bovine mam- mary tissue stem cells can be used to kill the bacteria that causes mastitis.
In brief, Van de Walle and her team are exploring how com- pounds secreted by bovine mammary tissue stem cells can be used to kill the bacteria that causes mastitis. These com- pounds have also been shown to heal the mammary gland tissue damage that the pathogens cause during the infection. This is very exciting because it could allow milk production levels to rebound, perhaps even to the levels from before the infection occurred. The approach is also gaining intense inter- est because it may be applicable to other diseases as well. The research is being carried out collaboratively with animal health company Elanco. Funding for the research is being provided by Elanco, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) and the New York Farm Viability Institute (NYFVI), a non-profit organisation that supports research to make farms in the state more profitable. Of the new research, NYFVI executive director David Grusen- meyer recently stated in the Cornell Chronicle, “This is proba- bly the most novel treatment approach for mastitis I have seen in my career.” The NYFVI is currently also funding two other dairy projects. One is assisting producers to use the automated pre-milking stimulation available with conventional parlor milking sys- tems (and used widely in other countries). The other is the development of MyCow$ , a novel tool to improve dairy farm business decision-making through real time estimation of profitability. Both projects also involve researchers at Cornell University.
Origins of the current research In a study that was published in 2018, Van de Walle and Dr Daryl Nydam, a professor in population medicine and
16 ▶ DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 8, No. 3, 2021
diagnostic sciences at Cornell, had investigated the bovine mammary “secretome” – that is, all the compounds secreted from adult stem cells in mammary tissue. They discovered the secretome could kill bacteria and prevent damage from bac- terial toxins. Compounds in the secretome were also found to promote healing through “the growth of blood vessels and recruitments of new cells”. In addition, the team discovered that the secretome had more effectiveness against toxins produced by gram-nega- tive bacteria. This may be important in terms of the secre- tome approach as a complement to antibiotic therapy (if not a complete replacement). That is, both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria can cause mastitis, but the antibiotics currently approved in the US are more effective against gram-positive bacteria. Van de Walle notes that over the past several years, interest has been increasing in the bioactive factors secreted by hu- man stem cells. But she says, “There was not that much known about bioactive factors secreted by stem cells from domesticated veterinary animals. Especially when it was found that stem cell–secreted bioactive factors also have an- timicrobial properties in addition to regenerative and immu- nomodulatory properties, this really opens up an exciting new avenue of exploration of these stem cells secretes for many diseases.” Van de Walle’s group has also studied the se- cretome of stem cells in horses, pigs and chickens (research not yet published). In 2018, Dr Lucas Huntimer, a senior advisor for external inno- vation at Elanco, reached out to Van de Walle after reading the research paper. That year, as reported earlier this year, Huntimer suggested to Van de Walle that she should seek
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