Researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) www.wrair.army.mil, a Defense Department biomedical facility located in Silver Spring Maryland, are working on developing vaccines to save military and civilian lives.
In the civilian sector, Glaxo-Smith-Kline www.gsk.com and Sanaria www.sanaria.com are close to rolling out new vaccines for malaria a disease that is responsible for 300,000 deaths worldwide every year. WRAIR has participated as a research partner for both companies.
In addition, “WRAIR was a partner in the development of every existing malaria medication on the market today”, according to Kayvon Modjarrad, Director for Emerging Infectious Diseases at WRAIR.
He adds, “Every single licensed therapy for malaria has somehow made its way through WRAIR at some point in the therapy’s development. WRAIR was responsible for the testing, validation, and development within our institution.”
Modjarrad is co-leading a WRAIR program to develop a Zika vaccine. The program has made rapid progress, moving from an initial experimental vaccine in early 2001 to a preliminary human trial last November that is still screening new volunteers.
WRAIR is also partnering with Themis-GmbH www.themisbio.com, an Austrian-based biotech company to test a vaccine for chikungunya, a mosquito-borne disease appearing in countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Indian and Pacific oceans, and islands in the Caribbean. Although rarely fatal, it can leave infected people with long-lasting joint pain.
Themis-GmbH CEO Erich Tauber praised WRAIR’s expertise at vaccine testing which greatly accelerated the chikungunya research and he thinks that the vaccine could be ready in less than five years.
PaxVax www.paxvax.com, a U.S. pharmaceutical company is working on its own chikungunya vaccine but will work with WRAIR to carry out the next human clinical trial, according to John Smith, Chief Scientific Officer at PaxVax.
NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is involved in chikungunya research and just announced that a clinical trial is underway on an experimental vaccine to prevent infection with the chikungunya virus. The trial is presently enrolling healthy adult volunteers at three sites in the U.S.
Although WRAIR is DOD’s largest disease research center, WRAIR doesn’t work alone. Fort Detrick in Maryland, hosts the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity www.usamraa.army.mil which researches new pharmaceuticals and is aiding WRAIR and PaxVax in their vaccine development efforts.
Summing up, Modjarrad said, “WRAIR’s work is very much integrated into global health. The products that DOD develops are broadly relevant not just to our service members but also to the communities where they serve.”