08/14/07 Combating West Nile

Combating West Nile. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. People in southern Idaho have been hit with West Nile harder than any other area in the U.S. and Boise State University is in line to get funding in an effort to combat the disease according to Ken Cornell, Assistant Professor at Boise State. CORNELL: We actually accounted for, I think it was up to almost a third of the cases so when you think about the population of Idaho it's quite small so we actually got hit worse than everywhere else. A group of researchers at Boise State decided to work on a vaccine for the West Nile virus. Cornell says the funding while it sounds like a lot is really a fairly small amount. CORNELL: At least let's say we're in line for some substantial funding. The grant was for 940-thousand dollars. That probably sounds like a lot to most people and it's a fair amount of money but most vaccines in order to develop them, you're probably looking at more than 100 times that for a final development to occur. According to Cornell, the University staff can do a lot of the initial work prior to a major company stepping in. CORNELL: The advantage that we have in a university system is that we can do a lot of the preliminary work and actually work out what kinds of things can go into a vaccine to be successful and at the point it looks like it's a commercial viability then that's the point you partner up with industry because you've done a lot of the background work for them. Through the help of Congressman Bill Sali, the research funds should be secured for the University but it may take some time before they see the actual funds. CORNELL: We know that the budget for the vaccine project has been attached to the Department of Defense spending bill. This still has to go through the appropriations committee. There has to be an additional vote and it has to go on and be signed by the President so it's a lengthy process and what we would hope is that we would hear that the whole budget has been approved and passed and we would hope that would happen in the next few months. Last year, 38 Idaho counties reported cases of West Nile in horses, birds, mosquitoes or in people. About one thousand people were affected and 23 people died from the virus. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.