Tufts University: 175 Years of Innovation

Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine professor Jeffrey Mariner, V87, played a key role in eradicating rinderpest, a highly contagious cattle disease. Rinderpest was responsible for killing millions of cows and leading to the starvation of countless people in East Africa, Asia, and Europe, spurring international efforts to control the virus. Mariner and colleagues at Cummings were able to create a heat-stable vaccine, which they then proposed to the African Union and the World Organization for Animal Health, leading to global distribution of the vaccine and the eradication of rinderpest in 2011.