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AMANDA WALMSLEY Assistant Research Professor of Plant Biology Ph. D., University of Queensland Send e-mail to amanda.walmsley@asu.edu

Dr Walmsley joined Arizona State University in 2001. She received her Ph.D. in plant molecular biology in 1998 from the University of Queensland, Australia and researched as a post-doctoral fellow at the Queensland Agricultural Biotechnology Center. Dr Walmsley then researched at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Inc., Cornell University as a visiting scholar.

Plant-made vaccines have great potential to provide humans and the livestock industry with new options for health and well-being. However not one plant-derived vaccine has progressed beyond proof of principle studies in the 14 years that this technology has existed. The major theme of my laboratory is to develop the science of plant-derived vaccines into available products. My research activities therefore investigate ways to improve the performance of plant-derived vaccines. Examples of the projects on-going in my laboratory include targeting plant-derived vaccines to the mucosal immune system, investigations of vaccine adjuvants, and developing the processing of plant materials to enable mass delivery of a heat-stabile, active vaccine of a consistent dose. The target audience of the vaccines being developed in my laboratory is wide including domesticated animals, livestock, free-ranging or wild animals, vaccines for the developing world and vaccines for industrialized nations.

The technology of plant-derived vaccines is multi-disciplined. We therefore have diverse fields of experimentation including plant tissue culture; plant transformation; plant molecular biology ranging from DNA manipulation and transgenic plant characterization; application of food processing and pre-clinical trials. Current research in my laboratory is funded by both government and industrial sources.

Selected Publications

Joyce Van Eck, Amanda M. Walmsley and Henry Daniell. Tomato Transformation The Nuclear and Chloroplast Genomes. In: Transgenic Crops of the World - Essential Protocols (Ed. I.S. Curtis). Kluwer Academic Publishers, London, Chapter 31. In Press.

M. Manuela Rigano, M. Lucrecia Alvarez, Julia Pinkhasov, Yuguang Jin, Francesco Sala, Charles J. Arntzen, Amanda M. Walmsley (2004). Expression and stability of a fusion protein consisting of the enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli heat labile toxin B subunit and a tuberculosis antigen in Arabidopsis thaliana Plant Cell Reports. In Press. Plant Cell Reports, 22:502-508.

Dwayne D Kirk; Rachel Rempel; Julia Pinkhasov; Amanda M Walmsley (2004). Application of Quillaja saponaria extracts as oral adjuvants for plant-made vaccines. Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy 4 (6):947 - 958.

Francesco Sala, M. Manuela Rigano, Alessandra Barbante, Barbara Basso, Amanda M. Walmsley and Stefano Castiglione (2003). Vaccine Production in transgenic plants: strategies, gene constructs and perspectives. Vaccine 21:803-808.

M. Manuela Rigano, Francesco Sala, Charles J. Arntzen, Amanda M. Walmsely (2003). Targeting of plant-derived vaccine antigens to immunoresponsive mucosal sites. Vaccine 21: 809-811.

Amanda M. Walmsley, M. Lucrecia Alvarez, Yuguang Jin, Dwayne D. Kirk, Sa Mi Lee, Julia Pinkhasov, M. Manuela Rigano, Charles J. Arntzen and Hugh S. Mason (2003). Expression of an LTB fusion protein in transgenic tomato. Plant Cell reports. 21:1020-1026.

Amanda M. Walmsley and Charles J. Arntzen (2003). Plant Cell Factories and Mucosal Vaccines. Current Opinion in Biotechnology. 14(2):145-150.

Amanda M. Walmsley, Dwayne D. Kirk and Hugh S Mason (2003). Passive Immunization of Mice Pups Through Oral Immunization of Dams with a Plant-derived Vaccine. Immunology Letters. 86:71-76.

Amanda M. Walmsley and Charles J. Arntzen (2000). Plants for delivery of edible vaccines. Current Opinion in Biotechnology. 11:126-129.

Amanda M. Walmsley and Charles J. Arntzen (2000). Plants for Production and Delivery of Vaccines. In: New Vaccine Technologies (Ed R.W. Ellis). Landes Bioscience Georgetown, Texas USA, pp263-273.

Patents

Dwayne D. Kirk, Amanda M. Walmsley, Hugh S. Mason, Charles J. Arntzen (2002). Methods and compositions for stable transgenic plant pharmaceuticals and their use as contraceptives. PCT patent application 60/283.884.