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Professors Maynard and Peppas Received Gates Foundation grant on Targeted Oral Vaccines
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Jennifer Maynard |
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Nicholas Peppas |
Professors Jennifer Maynard (of Chemical Engineering) and Nicholas Peppas (of Biomedical Engineering) have received a Gates Foundation grant on “Targeted Oral Vaccines to Induce Cellular & Mucosal Immunity”. This grant is one of 76 grants funded out of more than 3,000 proposals worldwide. Grand Challenges/Explorations is a special Gates Foundation grant program that “... fosters creative projects that show great promise to improve the health of people in the developing world”. Initial grants are awarded two times a year, and successful projects have the opportunity to receive additional funding of $1 million or more. According to the Gates Website this is the first Gates Foundation grant awarded to UT Austin. In their work, the two researchers seek to engineer proteins to be delivered by oral polymeric vaccine that specifically bind to receptors of M cells on the gut mucosa. By targeting these M cells, antigens can be introduced directly to the mucosal system, inducing a targeted, stronger immune response. Active participants in this grant will be BME PhD student Margaret Phillips and ChE PhD students William Liechty and Tariq Khan.
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