PREVENT partners
Funding partners | R & D partners
VIDO/InterVac | The Canadian Center of Vaccinology | The BC Centre for Disease Control
Research | Facilities
The Canadian Center for Vaccinology
Halifax: The Canadian Center for Vaccinology (a partnership among Dalhousie University, the IWK Health Centre and Capital Health) offers a unique strength in its clinical trial and public health component.
Research
The Canadian Center for Vaccinology was established to develop, implement, and evaluate vaccine technologies and vaccines for infectious diseases that have a significant impact on Canadian and global health and to train experts in these critical and evolving fields. This integrated, multidisciplinary research program brings together investigators from diverse disciplines to focus on vaccine discovery and evaluation.
The collaboration of researchers in basic biomedical, clinical, and social sciences and the humanities provides a continuum of vaccine research from basic microbiological and molecular research in vaccine discovery and development, to translational research – research that takes basic science to marketable product—such as vaccine safety and efficacy studies, to evaluation research, encompassing clinical trials as well as vaccine program and policy evaluation. Social sciences and humanities research is integrated with both vaccine discovery and evaluation; it addresses a wide range of ethical, legal, and societal issues that inform policy and practice.
Current research in the Vaccine Discovery Group includes development of mucosal vaccines against pertussis, Chlamydia infection, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as well as the development of novel adjuvants and needle-free vaccine delivery systems.
Ongoing research in the Vaccine Evaluation Group includes the assessment of new vaccines to prevent meninogococcal infections in young infants, novel combination vaccines, and improved vaccines against hepatitis B and influenza. The Health Policy and Translation Group focuses on moving evidence into health policy in order to improve population health. An initial focus has been on influenza in pregnancy: demonstrating that pregnant women get more serious disease, discussing the implications of these findings for public health policy, and exploring current barriers to influenza vaccine uptake in pregnancy and novel and innovative approaches to improving influenza vaccine uptake. This group will continue to explore more generic public health, legal, and ethical issues in vaccine research, vaccine use, and vaccine uptake in pregnancy.
