Founding Director: Philip Felgner, PhD
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 from the Adeline Yen Mah Vaccine Center, 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 Adeline Yen Mah Vaccine Center 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
Our Competitive Advantage
Empowered by the distinctive One Health approach of UC Irvine Health Affairs that transcends disciplinary boundaries, the Adeline Yen Mah Vaccine Center comprises faculty and staff from the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences (encompassing schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy & pharmaceutical sciences, population & public health, research centers and institutes including the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute) and UCI Health, our regional healthcare system. 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. With an initial three-year, $33 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Vaccines for Pandemic Preparedness Center within the Adeline Yen Mah Vaccine Center is spearheading a multi-institutional initiative to create new vaccines.
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 UC Irvine in a space that promotes collaboration and innovation.
Philip Felgner, PhD
Professor, Physiology and Biophysics, School of Medicine
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 UC Irvine, and their realization, will revolutionize the treatment of genetic disorders affecting the immune system and other inherited disorders.
A Global Leader
UC Irvine is well-positioned to amplify its leadership in vaccine science through synergies that create added value. Stellar faculty already poised to collaborate across complementary programs number:
Current Team
The Adeline Yen Mah Vaccine Center will include these internationally renowned faculty, along with future recruits:
Join Us in Making an Impact
We are seeking philanthropic partners to establish a home for the Adeline Yen Mah Vaccine Center in the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building, and to support our programmatic funding to achieve transformational discoveries.
