Bird Flu Research at Rochester

Background on Vaccine Research Unit

The vaccine research effort at the University of Rochester Medical Center brings together a rare combination of resources that covers the gamut from basic research, to vaccine testing, to improving and measuring the availability of vaccines to people who need them most. Among the targets are well-known killers such as HIV and pneumonia; common diseases like flu, whooping cough and Alzheimer’s disease; and more recent threats such as bird flu and anthrax.

All vaccines depend on our knowledge of the basic workings of the immune system, a primary focus of several laboratories. An ultimate goal is the rational design of vaccines, where scientists customize the body’s immune response in a predictable way against pathogens. Such basic research has the potential to create new approaches not yet imagined to prevent or treat diseases such as AIDS and cancer, and to revolutionize the manufacture of vaccines. Such work builds on long-standing strengths in immunology and infectious disease at the Medical Center.

It was a new approach developed 25 years ago at the University – conjugate vaccine technology – that led to the creation of vaccines against Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), pneumococcus, and meningitis; those vaccines now save tens of thousands of children each year from serious illness. The successful commercialization of the vaccine in 1990, breaking a long drought in new vaccine technology at the time, ushered in a new era of vaccine technology. The technology also became the most lucrative in the University’s history, creating funds plowed back into research to further improve human health.

More recently, research done more than a decade ago by a trio of University virologists has become crucial to two promising vaccines designed to prevent cervical cancer. A vaccine to prevent this type of cancer, which kills more than 250,000 women around the globe every year, is expected to become available within a year, thanks in large part to technology developed at the University. The vaccine targets a group of viruses known as human papillomaviruses (HPV), which cause cervical cancer.

On the applied side, the University’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit has had a hand in testing dozens of new vaccine candidates, including nearly every new vaccine to be approved in the last three decades. The unit is part of a network that the Federal government turns to for protecting the nation against infectious threats.

Just as important as creating or testing the vaccines is getting them to the people who need them most. Here again, University doctors are part of virtually every large national network created to monitor the effectiveness of vaccines. The Rochester community finds itself one of the best vaccinated and best monitored in the world, and researchers worldwide have a grasp on just how well vaccines work, thanks to research by Rochester doctors.

Miscellaneous Research Studies

 

NIH Funding

NIH Funding Continues to Grow at URMC

Clinical Trials

Find Clinical Trials Being Conducted at URMC/Strong Health.