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Vaccine development and
research are focus of BD grants
to Johns Hopkins University
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New vaccines with the potential to ease some of the world's
most serious public health problems hold tremendous promise.
The challenge of developing and evaluating those vaccines
demands an ongoing commitment to world-class
immunology research.
BD has committed grants totaling $1.6 million in financial
and other support to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, helping this leading
academic institution make progress in vaccine discovery
and development. The grants establish the BD Immune
Function Laboratory, a state-of-the-art facility for evaluating
immune responses to infectious diseases and experimental
vaccines. They also fund the Vaccine Evaluation Unit,
a research collaboration to evaluate advanced BD devices
for the delivery of new vaccines.
Investigators at the School of Public Health are utilizing
the BD Immune Function Laboratory to work on new vaccines
for measles, dengue, HIV, malaria and other major
infectious agents. The BD grant provides equipment and
reagents needed to evaluate the response of lymphocytes and
other immune cells to infections and immunizations.
The Vaccine Evaluation Unit is funding a collaborative
effort to test the safety and efficacy of novel ways to
deliver vaccines. Studies are being conducted using new
"microneedle" injection devices and other advanced vaccine
delivery technologies developed by BD. These innovations
offer the potential to boost immune response and
lower dosage volume for a wide range of existing and
emerging vaccines.
Diane Griffin, M.D., Ph.D., and Chair of the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department
of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, commented
that, "The grants have dramatically expanded our capacity
to look at important questions related to T-cell function for
vaccine development and have enabled us to acquire new
capacity for cell sorting."
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