Research institute announces $12 million in NIH contracts for smallpox research.

2004 DEC 1 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology announced that it received contracts totaling nearly $12 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to map the immune system's response to the existing smallpox vaccine as well as to the arena viruses responsible for hemorrhagic fevers and meningitis.

According to the announcement, researchers believe that this data will help in the development of a new and better smallpox vaccine as well as a first-ever vaccine to safeguard against the arena viruses.

The La Jolla Institute received the contracts under the NIAID's Large-Scale Antibody and T Cell Epitope Discovery Program, an initiative aimed at generating research data relating to immunity to infectious disease agents. NIAID announced the recipients of the 14 discovery program contracts totaling nearly $74 million, which went to the La Jolla Institute and 12 other leading research institutions.

The La Jolla Institute said that data generated under the epitope discovery contracts will provide one of the major sources of information to populate the nation's largest Immune Epitope Database, which is currently being designed by the La Jolla Institute under a seven-year $25 million NIAID contract awarded last year.

According to the announcement, the database will allow researchers around the world to quickly access key information on the way the body responds to disease-causing agents, especially those that are responsible for emerging infectious diseases, such as SARS and West Nile virus, or that are part of potential ...