Emory University School of Medicine has received a grant of $16 million to lead one of five national Cooperative Centers for Translational Research on Human Immunology and Biodefence by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Other institutions in the Emory center include the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington; the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona, Switzerland, the Mayo Clinic, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The four-and-a-half year grant is part of $85 million in NIAID awards aimed at a better understanding of the human immune response to potential agents of bioterror and rapid development of counter measures such as vaccines and therapies. The translational centers will focus on moving new findings about immune system function out of the laboratory and into clinical trials.

The Emory-led projects will include studying the human immune response to a vaccine in its entirety, from innate responses to peak immune responses, to the development of long-term immune memory; understanding how a successful vaccine works and using that knowledge to design strategies to enhance vaccine efficacy; and understanding at a cellular level how vaccines lose their effectiveness over time so as to improve the responses of the elderly to vaccination.