Supporting a Community of Pets

This capstone project highlights a community\u27s efforts to support in-need pets, particularly dogs and cats, as well as their owners. For this project, I organized and executed a multiple-week food drive focused specifically on collecting pet food. The objective of this project was to help diminish the rate of food insecurity found in pets within the Boise community, as well as bring a fresh sense of hope to pet owners who may be facing financial hardship or other personal challenges. Over nearly a month’s time, my pet food drive was able to raise over 750 pounds of food for those in need, and all of the collections were donated to a local St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry to be distributed. With the help of many selfless donors, we, as a community, have had the opportunity to help support dozens of pets, individuals, and families because of this project\u27s creation

Adjuvant-dependent impact of inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines during heterologous infection by a SARS-related coronavirus

Whole virus-based inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines adjuvanted with aluminum hydroxide have been critical to the COVID-19 pandemic response. Although these vaccines are protective against homologous coronavirus infection, the emergence of novel variants and the presence of large zoonotic reservoirs harboring novel heterologous coronaviruses provide significant opportunities for vaccine breakthrough, which raises the risk of adverse outcomes like vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease. Here, we use a female mouse model of coronavirus disease to evaluate inactivated vaccine performance against either homologous challenge with SARS-CoV-2 or heterologous challenge with a bat-derived coronavirus that represents a potential emerging disease threat. We show that inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines adjuvanted with aluminum hydroxide can cause enhanced respiratory disease during heterologous infection, while use of an alternative adjuvant does not drive disease and promotes heterologous viral clearance. In this work, we highlight the impact of adjuvant selection on inactivated vaccine safety and efficacy against heterologous coronavirus infection

Adjuvant-dependent impact of inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines during heterologous infection by a SARS-related coronavirus

Numeric source data used to generate all figures besides RNA Sequencing. Information required to access RNA Sequencing raw .fastq files also provided here and in Data Availability statement. Primer probe sets used for qPCR are also provided