Vaccines & Immune Biology

Ines Atmosukarto of Lipotek Pty Ltd. in Australia proposes to develop a novel TB vaccine utilizing synthetic "nano-sacs" called liposomes that carry TB antigens and are anchored with a self-adjuvanting protein that binds to and stimulates dendritic cells.

Louis Schofield of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia will develop a synthetic saccharide-conjugated vaccine that would provide immunity against GPI, a toxin produced by the malaria parasite that is a major determinant in the severity and fatality of the disease. This project's Phase I research demonstrated preclinical safety and efficacy of a synthetic anti-toxin vaccine for malaria, showing that the oligosaccharide target was conserved across all malaria species and life stages.

Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) is the leading cause of diarrhea in the developing world. Roy Robins-Browne, of the University of Melbourne, in Australia will evaluate the effectiveness of a prototype vaccine that combines enterotoxin of E. coli (which lacks immunogenicity by itself) with another epitope to attract helper T cells and a lipid adjuvant to ensure delivery of the antigen directly into the cell.

Loren Walensky of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the U.S. will apply a new chemical technology to engineer structurally stable HIV-1 antigens for vaccine development. Walensky will test whether preserving the critical biologically active shape of HIV-1 polypeptides will yield neutralizing antibodies upon vaccination with his laboratory's synthetic immunogens.

Bryce Chackerian and David Peabody at the University of New Mexico in the U.S. have developed a new phage display system based on highly immunogenic virus- like particles (VLPs), and will utilize this new system as a platform to identify new vaccines that induce broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV.

Lynda Morrison of St. Louis University in the U.S. will develop a vaccine vector based on a prototype vaccine for herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2) that encodes multiple CD8 T cell epitopes from HIV proteins, and test its ability to stimulate a robust CD8 T cell response against HIV.

Jeff Schorey of the University of Notre Dame in the U.S. will evaluate the use of exosomes, which are small membrane vesicles released from macrophages infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, as a new platform for TB vaccines. Exosomes contain proteins and glycolipids that can elicit a robust innate and acquired immune response.

Gyanu Lamichhane of Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. will develop a novel vaccine for TB based on existing BCG vaccines modified to express a gene that is specific to latent TB in order to generate a robust immune response to a latent infection.

Glycans are an important component of surface molecules in tuberculosis but their role in protective immunity is still largely unexplored. Carlos Rivera-Marrero and Richard D. Cumming of Emory University in the U.S. will develop high-throughput glycan microarrays to identify glycan antigens, determine their chemical structure, and design glycan-peptide vaccines for future testing.

Kasturi Haldar of the University of Notre Dame in the U.S. will rapidly screen malaria parasite genes that are essential for invasion and growth in human red blood cells. Characterizing these proteins may reveal novel vaccine targets for blood stage infection.