Texas A&M Equine Veterinarian Wins Prestigious Career Development Award

Story by Courtney Price, VMBS Marketing & Communications

August 21, 2024

Dr. Rebecca Legere, a doctoral student and incoming faculty member at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS), has won the 2024 Elaine and Bertram Klein Development Award, a highly competitive career development award of $20,000 from the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation.

The award, which is issued annually to one recipient, is designed to spur the development of potential career researchers and help advance their experience with techniques and general research methods. 

Legere, who is currently finishing her Ph.D. under Dr. Noah Cohen in the VMBS’ Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, will be joining the same department in August as an assistant professor. Her doctoral research focused on using aerosol mRNA delivery to treat and prevent respiratory disease in horses, a project that she looks forward to building on as a faculty member thanks to the generosity of the Klein family.

“I am so happy that Dr. Legere received this generous award from the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation,” Cohen said. “She is an extraordinarily talented clinician-scientist, and it has been a great privilege and honor to have her working in our laboratory. This honor was well deserved because of all her outstanding work.”

Legere also won awards at this year’s annual meeting of the Society of Phi Zeta, the honor society of veterinary medicine. Each year, the organization awards two prizes — one for a research publication in basic research and one for clinical research. Legere won both awards, demonstrating excellence in both fields of veterinary research.

Adding To A Legacy Of Equine Expertise

Legere is a member of the VMBS’ Equine Infectious Disease Laboratory (EIDL), which is led by Cohen and was founded in the mid-1980s by the late Dr. Ronald J. Martens. Throughout its history, EIDL has been well-known in equine medicine for a number of important discoveries and novel treatments.

“Our lab has a huge legacy,” Legere said. “Our founder, Dr. Martens, developed the only effective prevention for foal pneumonia caused by Rhodococcus equi by transfusion of hyperimmune plasma, which has become industry standard and is a main pillar behind much of our lab’s research.”

R. equi is notorious for causing a type of pneumonia in foals that is widespread and challenging to treat because the clinical signs don’t appear until it’s very advanced, and antibiotic treatments are becoming less effective due to resistance. Prior to the development of the transfusion treatment — which gives plasma from vaccinated adult horses to young foals — there was no practical or effective way to control R. equi infections in the farm setting.

Under Cohen’s leadership, the lab has also developed several other important strategies for preventing and treating R. equi pneumonia, including the first ever vaccine, which is given to pregnant mares. Because Cohen also demonstrated that foals can be infected almost as soon as they’re born, giving their mothers a vaccine helps to kickstart the development of necessary antibodies.

Now, Legere is adding to this legacy with her own research into the development of new methods for getting foals the antibodies they need to fight off R. equi infections.

“The plasma transfusion method was a huge step forward, but it’s not perfect,” Legere said. “It doesn’t always work consistently. It can be risky to foals and also quite expensive. That’s where my project comes in. We know that foals need these protective antibodies within the first couple days of life, but if you use a vaccine, antibodies take time to develop. By then, the foal is already infected, so we are nebulizing mRNA that codes for the antibodies, which we can deliver right into the lungs of foals. This allows the foals to make their own antibodies within the lungs almost immediately, right at the site of infection, while reducing the risks of IV plasma transfusion.”

Nebulizing is a process that turns a liquid medication into a breathable vapor, which makes it a highly efficient method for targeting the lungs.

“If we tried to nebulize the antibodies themselves, it would take too long and too much drug to give the foals the amount they need to be protected from infection,” Legere explained. “Instead, we give them the ability to make their own antibodies but in a way that’s faster than through a vaccine. Within hours, they have antibodies right there in the lungs.”

The nebulizing process, which takes a few minutes to complete, is simple to administer and doesn’t agitate the foals, and within a few hours, they have made their own antibodies throughout the lungs.

“We use a little mask and connect it to the same kind of nebulizer that we use for nebulizer treatments on adult horses or humans with asthma. It’s a quick and quiet process, and they just inhale it without the need for injections or IV catheters,” Legere said. “It’s very safe.”

Taking Treatments To The Air

One of Legere’s most exciting research findings is that nebulization and mRNA-encoded antibodies can be used to help fight many kinds of illnesses besides foal pneumonia — including illnesses in humans.

“This technology and the questions we are working to answer will have much greater impact beyond just newborn foals and Rhodococcus, and we are working towards applying this to other high-impact diseases that will translate to other areas of veterinary and human medicine.”

Dr. Rebecca Legere

“Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a disease that impacts humans and causes symptoms similar to the common cold,” Legere said. “But in infants, it can be much more serious. Right now, they are using an injection of antibodies to prevent RSV in infants, which works well but isn’t very pleasant for the baby. 

“This is another area where nebulized mRNA could be used to produce antibodies in the lungs at the site of infection, and there are several groups working to apply this technology to pediatric respiratory diseases,” she said. “This technology and the questions we are working to answer will have much greater impact beyond just newborn foals and Rhodococcus, and we are working towards applying this to other high-impact diseases that will translate to other areas of veterinary and human medicine.”

Legere, who was a biomedical engineer before her veterinary career, is excited to see what translational developments will continue to come out of her work on foal pneumonia.

“My work is a really cool combination of aerosol medicine, infectious disease, newborn foals, and internal medicine. It’s been incredible seeing how it all comes together,” she said.

In the future, Legere is hoping to expand her research into nebulized mRNA treatments to address other common respiratory diseases in horses, including asthma, strangles and equine herpesvirus. 

“There’s even potential to take this knowledge to other areas of veterinary medicine,” Legere said. “Respiratory disease in farm animals is a major concern in the agricultural industry and has major impacts on animal welfare and productivity. However, there are a lot of special concerns with applying these technologies in farm animal medicine — including keeping costs low, ensuring food safety, and making it usable in the field setting — so we need to continue developing the ideas and finding practical solutions to address problems in the clinic and on the farm.”

She’s also working with collaborators to develop more effective nebulizers, inhalers, and oxygen delivery interfaces for large animal patients, and is working to better characterize how aerosol therapy can be applied effectively and practically to help patients in different areas of veterinary medicine.

“Right now, every device is different,” Legere said. “They all have different delivery patterns, so delivery of the drug is very dependent on the device and which drug you’re using, even if it’s just oxygen or saline. I’m looking for ways to make that more consistent and helpful for the clinical patients and their owners.”

An Investment Pays Off

For Legere, winning the development award and getting to join the VMBS’ faculty are rewards for a long investment.

“I took the long road to get here,” she said. “First, I got my biomedical engineering degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, and then I worked in industry for a bit.”

After that, Legere studied for her master’s degree in West Texas at Sul Ross State University, followed by veterinary school at Kansas State University.

“After that, I did a residency at Auburn University, where I worked with a ton of Aggies, and they sent me here during Hurricane Harvey to help in the VMBS’ Large Animal Teaching Hospital,” she said. “That’s when I got to meet Dr. Cohen, and that’s how the connection with the VMBS happened.”

Becoming a faculty member at the VMBS is also a dream come true for Legere, who used to visit the Texas A&M campus while working on her master’s degree.

“I used to drive here with a friend several times a semester to make photocopies at the Texas A&M Medical Sciences Library,” she said. “We’d save all our quarters for the scanner, and as we made copies of articles and book chapters to take back home, we’d talk about getting into vet school at Texas A&M. We really idolized this place, and now I’m going to work here.

“It doesn’t feel real,” she said. “Sometimes I have to pinch myself, but it’s slowly sinking in.”

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For more information about the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, please visit our website at vetmed.tamu.edu or join us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Contact Information: Jennifer Gauntt, Director of VMBS Communications, Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, jgauntt@cvm.tamu.edu, 979-862-4216

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