Assistant Professor of Animal and Avian Sciences Andrew Schiffmacher (College of Agriculture and Natural Resources) is leading a Grand Challenges Grant supported project that seeks to improve understanding of how negative external influences irreversibly alter fetal mammary development and subsequent mammary function. This study will provide mechanistic insight into how hyperandrogenism, and ultimately aberrant fetal mammary programming in general, contribute to primary milk insufficiency and other breast pathologies manifesting in adulthood.
Recently, this project has engaged with another Grand Challenges supported study. In response to the discovery that H5N1 bird flu is infecting dairy herds and people working with these herds, Dr. Schiffmacher began developing a research collaboration with fellow Grand Challenges Grant awardee Dr. Andrew Broadbent (Team Project Grant: Modeling the Evolution of Avian Influenza Viruses) to better understand how H5N1 and other viruses infect cattle and are shed from mammary epithelial cells. In line with the current objectives to develop new in vitro human mammary models, Dr. Schiffmacher and his team have created nine bovine fetal mammary lines that they are in the process of validating. The goal is to select the lines that differentiate into all of the adult mammary epithelial cell types and culture them in 2D and 3D mammary organoid systems. The team will then share these in vitro systems with Dr. Boadbent for H5N1 assays and future grant applications.
Dr. Schiffmacher gave a talk at the American Dairy Science Association 2024 Annual Meeting this past June in West Palm Beach, FLA, to present our early data and obtain feedback from the dairy science community.
Project team member Suchana Ghimire, an M.S. student, presented early data at the Society for Developmental Biology's 83rd Annual Meeting this summer in Atlanta Georgia.
For more information, visit: https://research.umd.edu/fetal-mammary