The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) announced the award of a groundbreaking
multi-year contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part
of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The goal of the contract, which may total up to $44.8 million over seven years if all contract
options are exercised, is to comprehensively identify the complex immune responses required
to prevent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection or active tuberculosis (TB) disease. The project
is titled “A cross-species mechanistic interrogation of mycobacterial and vaccine-induced
immunity.”
“The essential information that is missing in the fight against tuberculosis is knowing what it
takes to protect someone from the disease,” says Rhea Coler, PhD, Senior Vice
President, Preclinical and Translational Science at IDRI and Principal Investigator for the
contract. “We believe that the knowledge gained from this study will provide fundamental
immunological insights in the fight not only against TB, but against a host of other related
diseases.”
The NIAID “Immune Mechanisms of Protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis Center
(IMPAc-TB)” contract allows IDRI to partner with institutions in the US and around the world
including Colorado State University, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center/SCHARP,
Ragon/Harvard, Denver Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center/National Jewish Health, La Jolla
Institute for Immunology, Oxford University, and Public Health England to conduct
complementary pre-clinical and clinical studies that will correlate data in real-time. “These
studies allow us to compare and interrogate how our investigational tuberculosis vaccine is
working across species in multiple laboratories, providing high quality and reproducible
results,” says Dr. Coler. “This will be the first time that anyone in the field has conducted an
interrogation that concurrently studies the mycobacteria- and vaccine-induced protective
immunity in humans and several animal species.”
Scientists at IDRI have developed a tuberculosis vaccine candidate, ID93 + GLA-SE, which has
proven safe and evokes a strong immune response in a variety of clinical settings. Studies to
determine whether the vaccine is effective in preventing infection with tuberculosis, and
whether ID93 + GLA-SE may increase the effectiveness of drug therapy for tuberculosis are
currently ongoing. “Using the most advanced technology and platforms available, this contract
allows us to collect comprehensive immunological data for the evaluation of samples derived
from different experiments,” says Dr. Coler.
“Our hope is that we will be able to not only define correlative protective mechanisms against
TB, but also to apply our findings to other intracellular pathogens and lung-based diseases.”
This project has been funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under
contract 75N93019C00072.
