The goal of our lab is to develop vaccines for infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, SARS-CoV-2, HCV, and TB. There are currently about 36.9 million individuals living with HIV worldwide. The AIDS epidemic represents a major threat to public health, economic development, and cultural stability worldwide. The anti-viral drugs have succeeded only in prolonging the lives of some infected individuals fortunate enough to have access to the medications. These drugs do not cure infection, and are associated with several serious side effects, prohibitively high cost, the need for rigorous adherence and the potential for developing viral resistance. So, the development of a safe and effective HIV vaccine is imperative. Our efforts are focused on developing both prophylactic vaccines (given to people ahead of infection) as well as therapeutic vaccines (given to HIV+ individuals). Similarly, the recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is responsible for more than 200 million cases worldwide with more than 4 million deaths. Although there are several vaccines approved or authorized for emergency use, there is still a large population of unvaccinated people, especially in the developing world. Thus, it becomes imperative to develop additional vaccines. Also, recent rise of SARS-CoV-2 variants have made it necessary to develop additional newer SARS-CoV-2 vaccines or combinations thereof. Thus, our MVA based vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 could be an additional arsenal against the fight against COVID-19. Our vaccine is currently in pre-clinical trials which could be an effective additional vaccine. Our lab also works on other infectious agents including influenza virus, hepatitis C virus (HCV) and tuberculosis.
Prophylactic Vaccines
Our approach to developing a prophylactic vaccine is to generate strong anti-viral antibody responses and cytotoxic T cell responses. We use recombinant DNA and modified vaccinia Ankara (current smallpox vaccine) as vaccine delivery vectors. A HIV vaccine based on these vectors was shown to be safe in healthy human volunteers and is currently being tested for immunogenicity in humans. We developed newer versions of this vaccine that elicit stronger humoral immune responses and protect nearly 60-70% of the vaccinated animals completely from repeated infections. These newer versions of vaccines are about to enter human safety trials.
Therapeutic Vaccines
Our approach to developing a therapeutic vaccine is to reprogram the virus-specific CD8 T cells in the infected host. Cellular immune responses are critical for the control of HIV replication. In particular, CD8 T cells play a major role in restricting the growth of virus and eliminating virus-infected cells. In the presence of antigen and inflammatory signals, cognate naïve CD8 cells expand and traffic to infection sites, where they lyse virus-infected host cells. However, CD8 T cells from HIV-infected individuals have been shown to be non-functional meaning they are there but do not do their job. Our efforts are focused on how to reprogram these cells and to generate new cells so that they can clear the virus-infected cells.