Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Although vaccines that target many important viral infections such as smallpox and polio have successfully been developed, other infectious diseases have proved more difficult to target. Even when a good vaccine exists, production costs can put it out of reach of developing world countries, as is the case for most current influenza vaccines. Finally, several vaccines targeted to viruses have rare but serious side-effects that limit their use or acceptance (eg: measles-mumps-rubella, yellow fever). New approaches to vaccine development are therefore needed to address these issues. One of the most promising approaches for vaccine development is the use of plants to generate virus-like particles (VLP) as vaccine candidates. These particles are similar to their respective virus but lack viral genetic material, making them non-infectious. The Brian Ward Laboratory at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal has recently established a collaboration with Medicago, Inc. (Quebec City, QC) to develop and evaluate plant-derived VLP vaccines for respiratory viruses. The initial targets of this program are pandemic and seasonal influenza. Early data suggest that not only can influenza VLP be generated in tobacco plant cells, but that these VLP strongly activate the immune response in mice. In light of these findings, the Ward Laboratory will undertake a full immunologic and structural characterization of the influenza VLP generated in tobacco plant cells. Furthermore, the flexibility of this plant-based system needs to be established to address whether or not this technology can be used as a general vaccine platform for other viruses. Plant-based VLP represent an exciting (and inexpensive) potential for vaccine production. Elucidating the structural characteristics and immunologic mechanisms behind these particles will therefore be of prime importance if this technology is to be tested as a general platform for vaccine development.