VUMC scientists ‘sprint’ to find anti-Zika antibodies

Scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues in Boston, Seattle and St. Louis are racing to develop — in a mere 90 days — a protective antibody-based treatment that can stop the spread of the Zika virus.

This is the first of four “scientific sprints” sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the U.S. Department of Defense, under a five-year cooperative agreement worth up to $28 million that was signed last year.

The program, formally known as the Pandemic Protection Platform (P3), aims to prepare and deploy protective antibody-based treatments against viral outbreaks that threaten public health and security around the globe, said the program’s research director Robert Carnahan, PhD, associate professor of Pediatrics in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

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