{"id":17006,"date":"2023-02-23T21:30:41","date_gmt":"2023-02-24T02:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=17006"},"modified":"2023-02-23T21:34:29","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T02:34:29","slug":"dartmouth-vaccine-technology-helped-save-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2023\/dartmouth-vaccine-technology-helped-save-millions\/","title":{"rendered":"Dartmouth Vaccine Technology Helped Save Millions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"COVID-19\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Technology developed by a team of scientists at Dartmouth, including faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students, that contributed to the development of COVID-19 vaccines will allow Dartmouth to make major investments into advancing its research and education enterprise.<\/p>\n

The discovery at Dartmouth\u2019s\u00a0Geisel School of Medicine\u00a0was instrumental in quickly bringing to market the COVID-19 vaccines credited with\u00a0preventing more than 18 million hospitalizations and more than three million deaths in the U.S. alone. The underlying research, conducted by Professor Jason McLellan and his team at Geisel with collaborators at the Scripps Research Institute and the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, started in 2014 and culminated in 2016 with the development of a method to stabilize coronavirus spike proteins for use as vaccine antigens.<\/p>\n

In December 2022, the National Institutes of Health\u2014which shares ownership of the intellectual property from the research with the other collaborating academic institutions\u2014finalized terms of an agreement with Moderna. The recent agreement follows similar licenses to this technology between the NIH and several other vaccine companies, including BioNTech SE.<\/p>\n

\"This kind of scientific breakthrough demonstrates the impact of the innovative work that happens at Dartmouth.\"<\/strong><\/em>
\nPresident Philip J. Hanlon \u201977<\/p>\n

Dartmouth plans to reinvest the revenue generated from this technology into strengthening the institution\u2019s research and education enterprise and advancing work that has the potential to save millions of lives and improve global health.
\n\u201cThis kind of scientific breakthrough demonstrates the impact of the innovative work that happens at Dartmouth,\u201d says\u00a0President Philip J. Hanlon \u201977. \u201cIt is a testament to our long-standing commitment to research; a collaborative culture created by faculty, students, and staff; and the strength of the research enterprise at the Geisel School of Medicine. The success of this technology enables us to increase our investment in growing the research support and resources we need to continue to develop the breakthroughs that make the world a better, more inhabitable place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The technology was developed by McLellan, when he was on the Geisel faculty, and a team of scientists including postdoctoral researcher Nianshuang Wang and\u00a0Daniel Wrapp, a talented graduate student who went on to earn a PhD from Dartmouth\u2019s Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies in 2021.\u00a0In McLellan\u2019s lab at Geisel, the team identified an urgent problem in need of solving: how to stabilize the highly labile spike proteins that are common to all coronaviruses to make them better vaccine antigens.<\/p>\n

Similar research was underway around the globe, spurred by the outbreak of SARS-CoV, another coronavirus epidemic that killed nearly 800 people worldwide between 2002 and 2004. Researchers, anxiously preparing for the inevitability of another infectious outbreak, raced to map the enigmatic structure of these coronavirus spike proteins\u2014an essential step on the path to vaccine development.<\/p>\n

\u201cImproving people\u2019s lives is exactly what drew me to science and what I hoped to achieve while developing vaccine technology at Dartmouth,\u201d McLellan says. \u201cFinding solutions to complex, real-life challenges is a race against the clock, and it\u2019s only possible through the kind of collaboration and community I developed with my colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jason<\/a>
Jason McLellan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

McLellan and his team finally cracked the code, first by determining a high-resolution three-dimensional structure of a coronavirus spike protein. With an atomic model of the spike protein in hand, they were able to engineer a modified form of the protein, which produced high titers of virus-neutralizing antibodies when injected into mice. This antigen modification strategy\u2014an approach that also holds promise for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines\u2014proved essential in 2020 when scientists and vaccine developers around the world rushed to create a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe research behind the COVID-19 vaccines highlights how discoveries by faculty and trainees in our medical school have direct and tangible impact on human lives,\u201d says\u00a0Duane Compton, dean of the Geisel School of Medicine. \u201cDr. McLellan\u2019s discovery is already credited with saving millions of lives, and it is a powerful example for how basic and translational science research improves people\u2019s lives. We are excited about how these funds will amplify this important mission at Geisel and for how it will support our training programs for the next generation of biomedical researchers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dartmouth has a long history of seeking solutions to the world\u2019s most challenging problems and pursuing medical innovation powered in part by collaborative efforts among faculty and students. It was at the forefront in the development of cancer immunotherapy, which has dramatically improved survival rates for certain types of cancer, and is home to the\u00a0Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, the first comprehensive documentation of patterns and variations in US medical practice.<\/p>\n

Dartmouth also was the site of the first-ever clinical X-ray (1896) and the birth of the BASIC computer programming language (1964); has produced three Nobel Prize winners, including Barry Sharpless \u201963 (one of only five scientists to win twice, including most recently in 2022); 17 Rhodes Scholars; and nearly 300 Fulbright fellows. Dartmouth is one of the 65 leading research universities of the American Association of Universities and one of only 146 Carnegie Classification R1 research universities and colleges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a responsibility to our students, faculty, and staff to continue providing the state-of-the-art facilities and support they need to learn and study science at the highest level,\u201d says\u00a0Provost David Kotz \u201986. \u201cBut the responsibility is not just to ourselves. Our work has a real-world impact, and we intend to continue pushing the boundaries of research to benefit people around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Technology developed by a team of scientists at Dartmouth, including faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students, that contributed to the development of COVID-19 vaccines will allow Dartmouth to make major investments into advancing its research and education enterprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":14343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[966,468,717],"class_list":["post-17006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","tag-covid-19","tag-dartmouth","tag-jason-mclellan","author-15"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/COVIDVaccine_featured.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-4qi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17006"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17012,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17006\/revisions\/17012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}