The Baker Institute, located on Snyder Hill, was founded in 1950. Formerly the Veterinary Virus Research Institute (VVRI), under the leadership of its founding director, Dr. James A. Baker. The institute made major contributions in its first two decades to the control of diseases of livestock, especially bovine and swine diseases such as rinderpest and hog cholera. 

Dr. James Andrew Baker, known as Drew to his friends, was the driving force and founding Director of the Institute. The Cornell University Board of Trustees voted to establish the Institute on September 20, 1950. 

The Institute’s early strength in canine respiratory diseases include the development of a groundbreaking dual vaccine that immunizes dogs against both distemper and infectious hepatitis. This was the first dual-virus vaccine for animals ever created.

Ongoing discoveries around infectious disease led to the discovery of diagnostic tests addressing fertility in dogs. Dr. Leland “Skip” Carmichael developed a diagnostic to test for a bacterium leading to abortions in dogs caused by Brucella.

Early research on feline panleukopenia led to quick work by Baker researchers to develop a diagnostic test able to identify the cause of a global canine disease outbreak as canine parvovirus, a never-before-seen virus. After creating the test, researchers at Baker then produced the parvovirus vaccine that has since saved millions of dogs’ lives from this devastating disease. 

In the 1980’s, the Institute secured its first National Institutes of Health (NIH) training grant. This embarked the Institute on the decades-long path of training the next generation of veterinary scientists and launching the Leadership Program for Veterinary Students.  Institute trainees include the inventor of the “Coggins Test” for equine infectious anemia, 11 deans of veterinary colleges throughout the world, numerous directors of research institutes, and leaders in industry impacting animal and human health across the globe. 

Baker Institute scientists begin mapping inherited diseases in purebred dogs, pioneering canine genetics as a research field. These efforts contributed foundational knowledge for canine genome work, when Baker researchers published the first linkage map of the canine genome in the journal Genomics. This milestone provides a framework for identifying disease-causing mutations in dogs and humans alike.

This is when the first example of therapeutic DNA treatment occurred as a result of ongoing dog genome mapping. In early 2000’s a patent was issued for a DNA-based test for Congenital Stationary Night Blindness (CSNB), and researchers went on to develop the first gene therapy technique to reverse blindness in dogs. 
*In 2017 gene therapy to treat a rare form of human blindness was approved by the FDA based on this early research by Drs. Gregroy Acland and Gustavo Aguirre. 
 

“Twilight” the mare was bred, born, and raised at Cornell's McConville barn, and was the first horse to have its genome sequenced as part of the international Equine Whole Genome Sequencing Project. In the mid-2000’s after 10-years of work conducted by Dr. Doug Antczak, the mare's 2.7 billion base pair genome was fully sequenced and served as a resource for genomics investigations around the world.

The first puppy born from a frozen embryo in the western hemisphere was Klondike, born from the frozen embryo of a beagle mother and lab father thanks to work by Baker Institute for Animal Health researcher Dr. Alexander Travis. The puppy’s birth was a breakthrough for developing improved assisted reproductive technologies for threatened species, including certain wolf species.

2015 - As a result of the continued work of the Travis lab, the first puppies born by in vitro fertilization (IVF) were delivered on July 10, 2015 at the Baker Institute. This advancement could help preserve endangered canine species and open new means for discovery in human and canine genetic diseases.

Dr. Gerlinde Van de Walle’s group confirms an equine parvovirus she discovered in 2018 with Dr. Thomas Divers is the source of Theiler’s disease, a fatal liver disease in horses. This finding imparts regulatory change at the United States Department of Agriculture. 

A study of horses in the de Mestre’s laboratory revealed that 42% of miscarriages and spontaneous abortions in the first two months of pregnancy were due to complications from an extra set of chromosomes, a condition called triploidy. This research has provided a foundation for understanding the genetic causes of pregnancy loss in horses, and for studying the causes of human miscarriage.