Principal Investigator Dr. Alexander Bukreyev was awarded up to $24.7M from the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium of the U.S. Department of Defense for the project titled “Modified mRNA-based vaccines against highly pathogenic filoviruses & arenaviruses.”
Dr. Bukreyev, along with UTMB co-investigators Dr. Thomas Geisbert and Dr. Richard Rupp, will collaborate with Dr. Andrea Carfi at Moderna, Inc. to develop and test prototype mRNA vaccines against Ebola, Sudan, Marburg, and Lassa viruses. The base 3-year contract of $13.5M will support filovirus vaccine development through Phase 1 trials, which will be run by UTMB’s Sealy Institute for Vaccine Sciences. The project could receive an additional $11.1M to model alternate routes of vaccine administration.