The vaccine field got a major boost today with the announcement that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will invest $50 million in a new collaboration with Stanford's School of Medicine to speed the development of vaccines for some of the world’s major scourges. The funds will support the new Stanford Human Systems Immunology Center, a multidisciplinary effort led by immunologist Mark Davis, PhD.
In recent decades, efforts to develop vaccines for major killers such as HIV and malaria have been stymied in part by the expense and time involved in conducting large-scale trials, which have often proved disappointing. Through the new initiative, scientists will use advanced immunological tools to better understand how vaccines provide protection and identify the most promising candidates to pursue in clinical trials.
What we need is a new generation of vaccines and new approaches to vaccination
“What we need is a new generation of vaccines and new approaches to vaccination,” said Davis, director of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection. “This will require a better understanding of the human immune response and clearer predictions about vaccine efficacy for particular diseases.”
The 10-year initiative will involve multiple faculty from diverse fields, including medicine, engineering and computer science. It will capitalize on a range of technologies, some of which have been pioneered at Stanford, which can rapidly analyze individual cells and provide a detailed profile of the human immune response, with all of its various components.
“This grant will provide crucial support to Stanford’s world-class scientists as they collaborate with investigators around the globe to assess vaccines against some of the most formidable diseases of our time,” said Lloyd B. Minor, dean of Stanford’s medical school. “The Stanford Human Systems Immunology Center will help the most promising vaccine candidates to move quickly and efficiently from the lab to the front lines of treatment, impacting countless lives.”
Previously: Knight in lab: In days of yore, postdoc armed with quaint research tools found immunology's Holy Grail
Photo of Mark Davis by Steve Fisch
