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Dr Amanda Walmsley

Research Fellow

Ph.D. University of Queensland

Telephone: +61-3-9905-5617
Fax: +61-3-9905-5613
E-mail: amanda.walmsley@sci.monash.edu.au

Dr Amanda Walmsley
Research areas
Dr Walmsley joined the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University as a Monash Fellow in January of 2006. She received her Ph.D. in botany 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 before accepting a position as an Assistant Research Professor at Arizona State University in 2001.

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-made vaccine has progressed beyond proof of principle studies in the 15 years that this technology has existed. The major theme of my laboratory is to develop the science of plant-made vaccines into available products. My research activities therefore investigate ways to improve the performance of plant-made vaccines. Examples of the projects on-going in my laboratory include targeting plant-made 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-made 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
  • M. Lucrecia Alvarez, Heidi L. Pinyerd, Jason D. Crisantes, M. Manuela Rigano, Julia Pinkhasov Amanda M. Walmsley, Hugh S. Mason, Guy A. Cardineau (In press).  Plant-made subunit vaccine against pneumonic and bubonic plague is orally immunogenic in mice.  Vaccine.
  • Joyce Van Eck, Dwayne D. Kirk and Amanda M. Walmsley.  Tomato Transformation for Plant-made Vaccines, In:  Agrobacterium Protocols (Ed. Kan Wang). Humana Press, Totowa, New Jersey. In Press.
  • M. Manuela Rigano, Steve Dreitz, Ana-Paula Kipnis, Angelo A. Izzo, Amanda M. Walmsley (2006).  Oral immunogenicity of a plant-made, subunit, tuberculosis vaccine.  Vaccine, 24 (5), 691-695.
  • Dwayne D. Kirk, Kim McIntosh, Amanda M. Walmsley, R.K.D. Peterson (2005). Risk analysis for plant-made vaccines. Transgenic Research, 14:449-462.
  • M. Manuela Rigano, and Amanda M. Walmsley (2005).  Plant production systems and developments in plant-made vaccines.  Immunology and Cellular Biology, 83(3): 271-277.
  • 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.
  • Joyce Van Eck, Amanda M. Walmsley and Henry Daniell. Tomato Transformation – The Nuclear and Chloroplast Genomes (2004). In: Transgenic Crops of the World - Essential Protocols (Ed. I.S. Curtis). Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Chapter 30, pp 405-423.
  • 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 22(7): 502-508.
  • 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

  • Guy A. Cardineau, Hugh S. Mason, Joyce M. Van Eck, Dwayne D. Kirk, Amanda M. Walmsley (2004) Vectors and cells for preparing immunoprotective compositions, such as Newcastle disease virus HN antigen, from transgenic plants. PCT Int. Appl., 60/467,998.pp 187. Pending.
  • 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.