Vanderbilt Vaccine Center

Eleven graduate students entering their fourth year of training have received the Dean’s Award for Exceptional Achievement in Graduate Studies.

James Crowe Jr., MD, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, will be honored today by the science and technology company Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany for his contributions to developing new therapeutics and vaccines against some of the world’s deadliest viruses.

Scientists are testing a new way to fight chikungunya virus that involves injecting genetic material into the bodies of infected and at-risk individuals to trigger rapid production of potent, virus-neutralizing antibodies.

VUMC has joined an international effort to streamline and accelerate development of vaccines and other treatments against a growing worldwide surge of deadly and debilitating viral infections.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Scripps Research Institute have discovered a “hidden target” on the surface of the hypervariable influenza A virus that could lead to better ways to prevent and treat the flu.

In January scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues in Boston, Seattle and St. Louis were given an audacious goal to develop — in 90 days — a protective antibody-based treatment that potentially will stop the spread of the Zika virus.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are participating in a national effort to develop vaccines and other treatments as countermeasures to prevent the spread of two emerging and deadly viruses — Nipah and Hendra.