Programs to control worldwide emerging zoonotic diseases are major challenges that one the most performing worldwide lab is doing with an outstanding network located around the World.

Professor Richt has created a huge scientific and technological platform generating solutions for emerging pathogens. This platform will be enlarged with the transfer to Kansas of the Plume Island lab in New York, which is the biggest lab in the World for dangerous emerging pathogens to create the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility (NBAF). The Laboratoire d’ImmunoPhysiopathologie Moléculaire Comparée

(IRD-UMR Ministère de la Défense) and its director Francisco Veas are proud to share with Montpellier’s scientific, medical, veterinary and pharma community, an outstanding moment of basic and translational science.

Speaker Biography

Jurgen Richt, DVM, PhD is Regents Distinguished Professor of the Kansas State University, College of Veterinary Medicine Director, Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases

A deep fascination with the ability of an infectious agent to outsmart its host has been the driving force behind Jurgen Richt's expertise in diagnosing and treating zoonotic diseases -- those which can be transmitted from animals to humans or vice versa. Richt is a veterinary microbiologist who has worked with multiple agents of zoonotic potential, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease, chronic wasting disease, animal influenza viruses, Rift Valley Fever virus, Borna virus and other emerging pathogens. Richt's career, which includes a seven-year assignment as lead scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Animal Disease Center, has been spent developing novel testing methods and remedies for a number of animal and zoonotic diseases.

Richt joined Kansas State University in 2008 as Regents distinguished professor and Kansas Bioscience eminent scholar in the College of Veterinary Medicine's department of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology. Richt became the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases, or CEEZAD, at Kansas State University in 2010.

As director, he leads an international network for scientific research involving 15 universities, various commercial firms and 25 principal investigators. In 2013 he was named a university distinguished professor, a lifelong title and the highest honor the university can bestow on its faculty.

Richt and colleagues were the first to generate prion protein-deficient cattle that are healthy and resistant to prion diseases. In his influenza research, Richt's laboratory was the first to establish a reverse genetics system for studying swine influenza virus pathogenesis in its natural host -- the pig. These studies led to the identification of influenza virulence factors and the development of a modified live virus vaccine based on a genetically engineered truncation within the NS1 gene. Richt and colleagues used the reconstructed 1918 influenza virus for experiments using the biosafety level-4 bio-containment facilities in Winnipeg, Canada.

At Kansas State University, Richt has established a research program that involves a multidisciplinary approach to solving both existing and emerging animal and zoonotic disease concerns. This includes the development of novel vaccines against threat diseases like Rift Valley Fever or avian flu as well as assays to rapidly detect these agents. Recently, Richt and colleagues developed a novel subunit vaccine for Rift Valley Fever.

Richt has authored or co-authored more than 170 peer-reviewed articles. His work has been published extensively, including in such prestigious journals as Nature Biotechnology, Science, Journal of Experimental Medicine, PNAS, Cell Host Microbe and Journal of Virology. He also holds a position on the prestigious scientific advisory board of the Scientific and Technical Review of the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris. In 2011, Richt received the Pfizer Animal Health Award for Research Excellence. Now, his aim has been to combine significant scientific research with the communication of results to both scientists and nonscientists.