Calgary researcher wins NIH grant for bacterial vaccine

A University of Calgary researcher has won a major U.S. grant to develop a vaccine against bacterial diseases terrorists could use as biological weapons. Dr. Donald Woods has been awarded $1.7 million to study and test vaccines against two diseases — glanders and melioidosis — which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers potential bioterrorism agents. “It’s easy to grow them in the lab. It would probably be easy to disperse them,” Woods, the Canada research chair in microbiology, told the Vancouver Sun. “There is a very real threat they could be used.” Woods hopes to develop a vaccine to stop the diseases from spreading in humans and animals. The funding came from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Glanders is a bacterial disease that typically infects horses, although it can also be transmitted to humans. The disease was allegedly spread among horses during the First World War to disrupt transportation. Melioidosis, which is closely related to glanders, has affected people in Southeast Asia. Both diseases kill about half of their victims. Woods, who has been studying the two diseases for twenty years, is focusing his current research on glanders and believes the two illnesses are so closely related a vaccine for one would likely be effective against the other. His research team has developed 12 candidates for a vaccine and will begin testing them on smaller animals before horses.