Developing and testing new vaccines and therapies has historically been a majOr focus of the research supported by the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Through its network of Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units (VTEUs), the Division has supported development of a wide variety of vaccines. One of the important rate-limiting steps in this process is the production of vaccines for testing. In many cases, candidate vaccines are provided by pharmaceutical companies, but the Division also supports clinical vaccine research for diseases that are not being adequately studied or new vaccination strategies that are not being developed by industry. In addition to live, attenuated viral vaccines and challenge strains, the Division has an expanded need to evaluate a variety of new candidates that cannot be supplied by the intramural contract (including inactivated vaccines and subunit/protein preparations) and to reformulate existing vaccines with other materials such as adjuvants. This vaccine production facility will therefore focus primarily on producing live and inactivated vaccines, but it will also include the capability to generate subunit and protein preparations and vaccine reformulations. This facility will also serve as a repository for specimens generated during the Division's clinical trials.
