Program in Vaccines and Emerging Infectious Diseases

Our Vision: Safeguard the Vulnerable

The COVID pandemic did not surprise the world-class infectious disease experts at UC Irvine. Looking back over the last century they knew that emerging infectious diseases of global impact were on the horizon and would become an ever more frequent challenge in our interconnected world. Indeed, Phil Felgner, PhD, the leader of the powerful cohort of investigators who will launch the Program in Vaccines and Emerging Infectious Diseases, invented the lipid carriers that delivered mRNA vaccines into our arms to bring the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic under control.

The pandemic challenged all of us to be better prepared; we are addressing this challenge through four aims, with an ultimate goal of safeguarding the vulnerable against future pathogens.

Early Warning System: Monitor and identify new infectious agents early on, enabling fast responses to contain pandemics.
Personalized Medicine: Provide diagnostic tests to assess individual risks and vaccination requirements.
Vaccine Discovery: Develop novel mRNA, DNA and recombinant protein vaccines against viruses, bacteria, parasites, cancer, autoimmune diseases and Alzheimer’s.
Vaccine Science: Enhance our foundational knowledge of vaccine science, control innate and adaptive immunity, and understand the workings of mRNA, DNA and protein vaccines.

The Program in Vaccines and Emerging Infectious Diseases has been selected as one of 12 high-impact research programs that will be located in the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building.

In This New Facility

World-renowned scientists and clinicians will collaborate to use RNA and DNA based vaccines to stimulate immunity against microorganisms and cancer cells.

Interdisciplinary teams will work side-by-side to model and understand vaccine science.

Future leaders will be trained by the best in leading-edge science and medicine, including gene delivery and gene editing technology applicable to a host of medical conditions.

Custon-designed labs and gathering spaces for events, speakers and presentations will foster engagement and dialogue to speed and share discoveries.

Our Competitive Advantage

Empowered by the distinctive One Health approach of UCI Health Affairs that transcends disciplinary boundaries, the Program in Vaccines and Emerging Infectious Diseases will comprise faculty and staff from the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences which includes the schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences, population and public health and UCI Health, our regional healthcare delivery system partnered with the trailblazing Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute. With brilliant minds working together in teams instead of in silos, our experts will push the boundaries of innovation and facilitate fundamental discoveries in vaccine science.

Ultramodern biomedical science is driven by multidisciplinary, multi-team efforts. This is particularly true for vaccine research, with a myriad of new approaches that harness the immune system and produce safe and effective targeted immunotherapies. Screening of infectious microorganisms arising in the environment, coupled with high throughput identification of the epitopes that can be recognized by the immune system to fight disease, allows fast development of safe and effective vaccines, with the recent revolutionary approach using RNA and DNA therapeutics.

Infectious disease science is evolving into diverse fields. The non-invasive gene therapy approach employed for the COVID mRNA vaccines has paved the way for combatting a broad spectrum of cancer and genetic diseases. In the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, our teams are applying modern RNA and DNA vaccine technology to breakthrough cancer treatments including cellular immuno-oncology, cancer metabolism and precision oncology. And in the Center for Translational Vision Research, scientists are pioneering gene therapy to reverse and prevent cell degeneration. This research has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of genetic diseases affecting vision, the immune system and other inherited disorders.

It is profoundly rewarding to see the impact of my lab’s work in abating the COVID crisis. As we look ahead to the next generation of treatments for infectious diseases, I am inspired by the potential to work with the extraordinarily talented, multidisciplinary team at UCI in a space that promotes collaboration and innovation.
Philip Felgner, PhD

A Visionary Leader

Philip Felgner, PhD
Professor, Physiology and Biophysics, School of Medicine

Philip Felgner, PhD, serves as the Director of the UCI Vaccine Research & Development Center and the Protein Microarray Laboratory and Training Facility. His current research aims to identify the appropriate antigens for developing safe and effective vaccines.

Gene therapies have long been the holy grail of medicine as they have the potential to treat most human diseases. The primary barrier to the practice of gene therapies has been delivery of genetic information to the interior of target cells in vivo. This barrier is now disappearing, in part because of dramatic advances made by lipid-based systems for delivery of nucleic acid-based drugs.

Today, the most widely used mRNA/LNP vaccine for COVID is a nucleic acid vaccine based on foundational technology invented by Felgner in 1987. In addition to providing a spectacular vaccine platform that saved lives during the COVID pandemic, mRNA nanoparticle science has many other uses in medicine. There are dozens of clinical trials underway that develop vaccines to prevent and treat infectious diseases and cancer. Investigators have discovered how to treat sickle cell disease, to reverse and prevent cell degeneration, and to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 and correct genetic disorders. Now, our researchers are working relentlessly to develop a method of guiding this therapy to specific cells in need of correction. The new approaches being pursued at UCI, and their realization, will revolutionize the treatment of genetic disorders affecting the immune system and other inherited disorders.

A Global Leader

UCI is well-positioned to strengthen its leadership in vaccine science, with the synergies of collaborative research creating added value. We have a number of internally renowned faculty across complementary programs:

21

School of Medicine

7

School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences

5

Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing

5

Public Health

5

External Collaborators

Join Us in Making an Impact

We are seeking philanthropic partners to establish a home for the UCI Program in Vaccines and Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building, and to support our programmatic funding to achieve transformational discoveries.

Named Spaces Within the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building

The overall design of the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building allows UCI to foster dynamic alliances that move discovery from inspiration to practice. There is the opportunity to name the new home for the Program in Vaccines and Emerging Infectious Diseases, as well as custom-designed laboratories and gathering spaces. As a philanthropic partner, you will ensure our scientists have the space, resources and facilities needed to perform their life-changing work.

Endowed Research Grants

Research endowments provide continuous support for our investigators who are reshaping the future of science and healthcare because external grants cover only a portion of costs. Moreover, endowed funding is particularly important to underwrite the most innovative discoveries and novel strategies because it provides the flexibility to follow the science that leads to breakthroughs. All this important work will be done under the name of our philanthropic partner. Named endowed scholarships underwrite the training of future generations of lead investigators and care providers in perpetuity.

Endowed Chairs

When you join us as a philanthropic partner naming an endowed chair, you will forever link your legacy to UCI’s distinguished experts. Ultimately, advances in biomedical research will lead to innovative therapies. Philanthropic funds for endowed chairs, research and scholarships live in perpetuity. These funds create the ability to recruit and retain top-tier faculty who will be critical for UCI to remain a world-class center of excellence for emerging therapies. Endowed chairs are so powerful because they establish a perpetual annual support stream for the chairholder to focus their efforts on aspirational research.