A University of California-Irvine scientific team has received $8 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to help develop a vaccine for Q fever, a highly infectious agent common among livestock. It also has a history of being aerosolized for use in biological warfare and is considered a potential bioterrorism weapon.
Q fever has also been a public health threat; a 2007-10 outbreak in the Netherlands infected thousands of people.
Felgner will use an approach he pioneered at UCI to create what’s known as “whole proteome microarrays” to discover immune response-activating antigen proteins that may be effective as a vaccine. He’ll also collaborate with Aaron Esser-Kahn, assistant professor of chemistry, whose group will develop synthetic agents that can boost and control the immune response to the proteins.
Felgner said the dual method may be useful in creating more vaccines for the military and the general public, adding that it’s an opportunity for the Department of Defense to testthe methods for potential use against other infectious diseases.
Symptoms of Q fever include high fever, nausea, severe headache and abdominal pain. It’s rarely fatal.
One demographic especially interested in the new vaccine is the military, according to Philip Felgner, the co-leader of the research team.
