Worldwide, more than 5 million children under age 5 die each year of respiratory infections, such as pneumonia and influenza.  Vaccines for diseases in the developing world would seem to be the answer, but several factors have made immunization projects difficult.  What has been stopping us?

Many vaccines make programs cost-prohibitive.

 

Sometimes protection against the most relevant viruses is elusive.

 

Medications are often unstable and not portable enough for travel where they are most needed.

 

Once is often not enough to be effective in prevention.

 

 

This innovation lab is designed to reverse the devastating disease burden and deaths associated with respiratory virus infection in infants and young children.  The program uses state-of-the-art techniques which allow local health care practitioners to participate in design, delivery and use in remote health care settings. 

Ralph Baric, PhD, professor of epidemiology at UNC, aims to develop a single-dose vaccine to use intranasally.  This revolutionary design is being developed through the use of synthetic genomics and a computer-based genome design.

 

Partners include: the UNC School of Medicine, Carolina Vaccine Institute and Global Vaccines.