On Oct. 20, 2014, Oregon Health & Science University’s Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute (OHSU) announced it has been awarded a $10 million contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Kineta, Inc., the University of Washington Center for Innate Immunity and Immune Disease (CIIID), and the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute of Florida (VGTI Florida) will collaborate with OHSU as major sub-contractors to develop new vaccine adjuvants that could boost the effectiveness of a wide range of human vaccines for infectious diseases including West Nile Virus, Dengue and Japanese Encephalitis. The work will also provide novel applications for enhancing the immune response against Ebola virus, HIV, and other virus infections. Infectious diseases affect millions of people in developed and developing nations, many with no effective protective vaccines.

Vaccines are the first line of defense against infectious disease and have saved millions of lives over the years. However, some people with weakened immune systems and the elderly lose the ability to respond to vaccines. The effectiveness of vaccines can be improved by the addition of substances called adjuvants that not only enhance the body’s immune response to the vaccine but also decrease the dose of the vaccine, allowing the vaccine supply to be extended.

Currently, the Food and Drug Administration has approved only three vaccine adjuvants. This award is part of an NIH push to develop more adjuvants.

During the course of the contract, scientists will first screen tens of thousands of chemical molecules to identify those with properties that indicate they could become an effective adjuvant. Then, they will study how those molecules work and make structural changes to improve their ability to enhance the immune system without causing unwanted side effects.

Toward the end of the five-year contract, scientists are aiming to have two adjuvant candidates that can be added to vaccines and advanced into Investigational Drug Development enabling studies as a first step toward FDA approval.