Dartmouth Researchers Receive Funding Awards to Develop New Vaccines

Dartmouth Engineering professor Margie Ackerman. (Photo by John Sherman)

ARPA-H is a research funding agency that supports transformative biomedical and health breakthroughs, ranging from those at the molecular to the societal levels. The agency launched a research program in October of 2023—the Antigens Predicted for Broad Viral Efficacy through Computational Experimentation (APECx)—as part of its goal to eliminate viruses as health threats in the future.

As was seen with COVID-19, viruses remain a significant threat to global health and security, causing pandemics, chronic illness, and cancer. Yet, current methods for developing vaccines and therapeutics are slow and expensive—partly due to an incomplete understanding of the structure and function of viral proteins—which often leads to lengthy research that targets viruses individually.

To address these issues, the APECx program will focus on the effective use of computer models in vaccine design. It will aim to transform vaccine antigen discovery by developing toolkits that can design widely effective antigens for whole viral families, and then demonstrating their accuracy by evaluating candidate vaccine antigens in clinical trials.

ARPA-H announced funding awards that include some of the largest academic centers in the US. One consortium is headquartered at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, WA, where the Leib Laboratory is a member, and another at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in La Jolla, CA, at which the Ackerman Laboratory is a member.

David Leib, chair and professor of microbiology and immunology at Geisel School of Medicine. (Photo by Rob Strong)

"The idea behind the ARPA-H mechanism is very unique," says Leib, chair and professor of microbiology and immunology at Geisel, who will be focusing on herpes simplex virus which—in addition to causing cold sores, sexually transmitted disease and neonatal infections—has recently been implicated in neurodegeneration and Alzheimer's disease.

"Rather than competing with one another, we'll be helping each other," says Leib, whose consortium will work to bring a novel vaccine to phase I clinical trials within three years. "While we’re all focused on different viruses, we'll be working towards the same end, which is to build a nationwide new platform for pandemic preparedness and vaccine generation."

To accomplish its goals, the APECx program is focused on three areas: high-throughput biochemical analysis and protein engineering, protein modeling toolkit development for antigen design, and translational candidate development and clinical evaluation.

"Both Dartmouth groups are excited to help our teams make progress toward the development of vaccines for viral infections that have proven challenging using standard approaches," says Ackerman, professor of engineering at Dartmouth.

"Contributing to evaluation of cutting-edge strategies to prevent one infectious disease is exciting enough, but to have the opportunity to amplify those contributions by working with APECx teams to develop new approaches that could be more broadly applied is the kind of impact that brings fantastic students and researchers to our campus."

In addition to his work in the lab and his leadership duties at Geisel, Leib is assisting APECx with the formation of a health equity board, drawing from Dartmouth's expertise in the space.

"It's no good having a great vaccine if people won't take it or can't afford it," he says. "This will help us address important issues such as cost, fair distribution, and vaccine hesitancy. So, while Dartmouth is already well-represented in the consortia, our involvement may actually grow as the project moves along, which is incredibly exciting."

Drs. Ackerman and Leib are members of the Dartmouth International Vaccine Initiative (DIVI), an interdisciplinary vaccine organization that spans Geisel, Thayer, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth Health, and Dartmouth.