Vaccines & Immune Biology

Tarit Mukhopadhyay of University College London in the United Kingdom and Stephen Ward of Stabilitech are working to apply a new liquid stabilizing technology to create thermostable vaccines that can withstand extremes of temperature and eliminate the need for a cold chain.

Samuel M. Duboise of the University of Southern Maine in the U.S., along with colleagues in Kenya, will develop a vaccine platform that uses bacteriophages that are structurally stable in one of Earth's most extreme environments - the hypersaline alkaline soda lakes of Kenya's Great Rift Valley. Vaccines produced using these engineered bacteriophages are expected to be inexpensive, stable, and easy to produce in regionally dispersed locations using common microbiological and biochemical methods that are highly scalable and adaptable for "just-in-time" production.

Pavan Muttil of the University of New Mexico in the U.S. will test the theory that inhaled live BCG immunization will elicit a stronger and more sustained immune response in mammals that have been exposed to mycobacteria than conventional intradermal BCG immunization. The new administration method could overcome the present variable protection to tuberculosis offered by the current intradermal technique.

Firdausi Qadri of ICDDR,B in Bangladesh will attempt to develop an oral vaccine for tuberculosis that uses transgenic rice seeds to express recombinant antigenic proteins that will induce immunity not only in the gastrointestinal tract but also in the respiratory mucosa.

Shiladitya DasSarma will lead a team at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in the U.S. to develop an inexpensive, safe, and effective oral vaccine against invasive Salmonella disease using gas-filled bacterial vesicles. The project seeks to produce a salt-encased, shelf-stable vaccine requiring no refrigeration for distribution worldwide.

Anton Middelberg of the University of Queensland in Australia proposes to develop a new vaccine for rotavirus by the directed self-assembly of a safe virus-like particle in industrial reactors. The approach uses low-technology engineering methods suitable for the developing world, ensuring relevance to the communities most in need of vaccine.

Sumi Biswas of the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford in the United Kingdom will test three components from the mosquito's innate signaling pathways for possible use in a malaria vaccine. Biswas will test whether immunizing mammal hosts with these components can induce strong antibodies, which can be passed along to mosquitoes to enhance the insect's innate immune response, thus leading to the death of the malaria parasite in the vector.

Miguel Prudencio of Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Portugal will test the theory that modified live rodent malaria parasites (P. berghei) can be used in a vaccine to elicit a strong immune response in humans without being able to infect human red blood cells and cause illness. This was successfully tested in Phase I, and they also established that the human antigens carried by the parasites could induce a selective immune response in mice. In Phase II, they will test their vaccine in Phase I/IIa human trials and evaluate it for safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity.

Ali Salanti of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark will develop and test a vaccine combining a new placental malaria vaccine candidate with the cervical cancer vaccine, with the potential of inducing a strong protective response against both diseases simultaneously. This project's Phase I research demonstrated that a combinatorial HPV and placental malaria vaccine induced highly functioning antibodies relevant to both diseases.

Daniel Stein and Phillip DeShong of the University of Maryland in the U.S. will construct and test a vaccine platform that utilizes low-cost, stable surfactant vesicles to deliver antigens for a sustained mucosal immune response. If successful, the platform could be used to develop low-cost vaccines for bacterial infections where carbohydrates form the basis of protective immunity, such as bacterial pneumonia and diarrheal diseases.