Investigators at Dana-Farber and their colleagues from other Harvard Medical School-affiliated hospitals and the University of Massachusetts Medical School will receive a $15.1 million grant over 4 1/2 years to fund research on a safer vaccine against the smallpox virus, an agent that has raised concerns as a potential bioterror weapon.

NIAID is committing approximately $85 million to develop the Cooperative Centers, a biodefense research network that focuses on the immune system. Investigators from the Cooperative Centers will work closely on projects to improve the nation's ability to respond to a biological terror attack. The goal of the research is to develop a better understanding of how the human immune system responds to disease-causing organisms, whether they are deliberately released or naturally occurring.

The Dana-Farber grant will support studies probing the body's immune response to the virus used in the current smallpox vaccine and to other viruses that may offer safer alternatives. The current vaccine, which is credited with eradicating smallpox around the world but hasn't been in general use in the United States since the early 1970s, uses a vaccinia virus a cousin of the smallpox virus to prompt an immune response that protects against smallpox. Though effective, the vaccine can cause serious complications in people with weakened immune systems, such as cancer and AIDS patients, or with skin diseases such as eczema.

"The aim of our research is to understand, in precise detail, the nature of the human immune system's response to the vaccinia virus and to other related viruses that potentially could be used as vaccines," says Dana-Farber's Ellis Reinherz, M.D., w
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Contact: Bill Schaller
william_schaller@dfci.harvard.edu
617-632-5357
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
17-Sep-2003