Production of Inactivated Vaccines Using Supralethal Irradiation

The discovery and commercial development of licensed vaccines often take many years of research followed by years of pre-clinical and clinical development. We propose to assess the feasibility of using a novel irradiation-inactivation technology to develop vaccines more rapidly. The technology utilizes a manganese-peptide complex to protect antigenic proteins from ionizing radiation while allowing the nucleic acid genome to be destroyed. In the Phase I, we demonstrated the feasibility of the method using poliovirus (PV1-Sabin). All objectives of the Phase I were met or exceeded. In the Phase II, we propose to continue the development of an improved trivalent inactivated polio vaccine and test the technology against a bacterial target. The improvements to the polio vaccine include (1) the use of attenuated Sabin strains to improve biosafety profiles and (2) a reduced cost due to improved immunogenicity as compared to existing chemically-inactivated vaccines (IPV). At each stage of development, the improved vaccine candidate will be tested for stimulation of neutralizing antibodies in the accepted animal model. We also propose to expand the study to include the antibiotic-resistant bacteria, Acinetobacter baumannii, using mouse models of lung and wound infection.