Samuel Landry of Tulane University will research the use of immune tolerance of dominant HIV epitopes prior to conventional vaccination with an HIV protein in order to stimulate a broader immune response.
Nikita Malavia of Boston's Children's Hospital has teamed up with MIT's Robert Langer to engineer nanoparticles that mimic host cells in an attempt to deceive viruses into releasing genetic material which is rendered useless by viral inhibitors.
François Baneyx of the University of Washington in the U.S. will synthesize nanoparticles consisting of an inorganic adjuvant core surrounded by a three-dimensional antigen shell. The particles will target lymph node dendritic cells that play a key role in initiating immune responses to infectious diseases.
To generate the large numbers of infective malaria sporozites needed for use in an effective vaccine, James Kublin of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the U.S. will use high throughput screens to develop a library of media compounds needed to optimize in vitro production.
Mark Davis of Stanford University in the U.S. will develop a new method to assess specific T cell responses to vaccinations. Using combinations of labeled tetramers to identify many types of T cell responses, Davis hopes to create better and more comprehensive assessments of immunity generated by vaccines. This project's Phase I led to the development of a new way to color-code T cells as a way to visually quantify immune response to an influenza vaccine.
Ellen Vitetta of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas is developing a new vaccine platform that will utilize synthetic B cell epitope mimetics (peptoids) conjugated to protein carriers to make vaccines that will induce robust, specific, and protective antibody responses against pathogens.
With evidence that RNA interference is a component of virus infection resistance, Andrew Fire of Stanford University will seek to understand how RNAi can function as a natural antiviral mechanism, and how such analysis can enable the design of antiviral interventions.
Eduardo Trombetta of New York University will study whether reducing the ability of lysomes to digest protein antigens in vaccines could enhance the vaccine's ability to elicit antibody and T cell responses.
Using thermostable nanoparticles as a delivery mechanism, Yasmin Thanavala of Health Research Inc and Roswell Park Cancer Institute in the U.S. will work to develop a single dose vaccine that can be given as close to birth as possible to protect against multiple diseases.