Year Awarded 2022
FFAR award amount $145,000
Total award amount $290,000
Location Ames, IA
Program Rapid Outcomes from Agricultural Research
Matching Funders Genvax Technologies
Grantee Institution Genvax Technologies
Genvax Technologies is developing a non-living vaccine composed of self-amplifying messenger RNA, or saRNA. saRNA vaccines are genetically engineered molecules that trigger the immune system to make antibodies that can successfully attack and destroy an invading virus. Researchers will test the vaccine at USDA-ARS’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center to determine if the vaccine will protect swine when exposed to a virulent, or severe, strain of the virus.
Grant OutcomeThis project demonstrated the feasibility of a highly multivalent mRNA nanoparticle vaccine platform for African swine fever (ASF) by successfully designing, manufacturing, and delivering a vaccine expressing 22 ASF viral proteins and evaluating it in a proof-of-concept swine challenge study. Although the vaccine did not protect pigs from disease, it generated ASF-specific antibody responses and produced critical data that will inform future ASF subunit vaccine development, while establishing a rapid-response vaccine production capability that can generate candidate livestock vaccines from a sequenced pathogen within weeks.