Major funding booster to improve effectiveness vaccines

Professor Adri Minnaard receives funding for a project aiming to improve the effectiveness of vaccines against major diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, and rotavirus. Together with international partners he isawarded 9.2 million US dollars from a vaccine discovery programme run by the US National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NAID).

Minnaards team will work on the five-year research project together with the Vaccine Formulation Institute (Switzerland) and researchers from the Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). Minnaards team will design and chemically synthesize compounds that act as vaccine ‘boosters’.

The project focusses on ingredients that work to increase vaccine efficacy, so called vaccine adjuvants. In particular, the researchers are developing adjuvants that lead to a specific type of immune response known as T-helper 17, or Th17 for short. The Th17 response is needed to improve vaccine efficacy against certain pathogens, such as TB, rotavirus, and influenza. Each vaccine for each pathogen may benefit from a tailored adjuvant, or a combination of adjuvants, to induce an optimal immune response. 

The researchers’ sights are set on adjuvants that target an immune cell receptor called ‘Mincle’- an abbreviation for the macrophage inducible calcium-dependent lectin receptor. The aim of the research project, which runs for up to five years, is to identify adjuvants that are better able to stimulate an immune response through Mincle receptors. The goal is that the adjuvants will be available at low-cost for use in future vaccines.