M. Amadori

Employee at "Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Lombardia e dell'Emilia-Romagna", Brescia, Italy, since 1984. Following the cessation of Foot-and Mouth Disease Vaccine production in 1991, Dr. Massimo Amadori undertook the reconversion of this sector and defined new strategies of research and development. He also started a new clinical chemistry laboratory with the aim of a better definition of animal welfare. This was based indeed on the combined assessment of haematology and clinical immunology parameters, which also define the immune competence for environmental pathogens. On the whole, the main issues of his activity in this time frame can be summarized as follows:

• Development of a live attenuated vaccine for Pseudorabies of swine.
• Development of production, control and field use of interferon-a as vaccine adjuvant and immunomodulator for a better control of environmental pathogens.
• Start and management of the Italian site of the European FMD vaccine Bank till december 2004
• Definition of guidelines for a laboratory contribution to the assessment of animal welfare parameters.
• Cell-mediated immune response to FMD virus-infected cells.
• Discrimination between FMD-infected and vaccinated cattle on the basis of the mucosal IgA response.
• Study and validation of the g-interferon assay as diagnostic tool for bovine tuberculosis.
• Biochemical and immunological characterisation in vivo and in vitro of bovine and avian PPD tuberculins
• Large scale production of cytokines and immune response mediators 

 Dr. Massimo Amadori took part in international activities:

• Different sessions of the Research Group of the FAO European Commission for the Control of FMD. He also acted as official Italian representative in this agency from 1995 to 2001.
• Different meetings of the ex-subgroup on FMD of the EU Scientific Veterinary Committee.

He also performed different teaching activities for post-graduate students within the Italian Scuola per la Ricerca Scientifica. He was also appointed professor of Applied Virology by the Veterinary Faculty of Milan. He has also been contract professor at the Veterinary Faculty of Padua from 1999 to 2003.

The project coordinator has run the Italian Reference Centre for Animal Welfare since its foundation in 2003 till 2008. Later on he moved to his present affiliation (Laboratory of Cellular Immunology, IZSLER, Brescia) and has been involved ever since in the characterization of innate immunity parameters of farm animals in models of response to infectious and non-infectious stressors (weaning, transportation, and so on).