Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at M膩noa (JABSOM) have demonstrated the efficacy in monkeys of multiple vaccine candidates targeting three filoviruses causing life-threatening infections to humans: Ebola virus, Sudan virus and Marburg virus. The new findings were published in on August 18.

Associate Professor Axel Lehrer of the leads the JABSOM team, working in collaboration on this project with late-stage biopharmaceutical company , and with the local development partner, Hawaii Biotech, Inc. The team also reported another breakthrough in demonstrating successful thermostabilization in single vials of Filovirus vaccines in (available online since August 13).

“Filoviruses are endemic in areas of the world where the power supply can be uncertain, making a thermostable vaccine particularly valuable,” said Lehrer. “Our work to date has demonstrated not only the feasibility of rapid and efficient manufacturing, but also the applicability of thermostabilization of multiple antigens with the potential for a broadly applicable and easily distributed vaccine.”

Lehrer鈥檚 work has focused on creating shelf-stable vaccines that require no refrigeration or freezing, which is key to eradicating viruses in tropical countries, and allows equitable distribution of much needed vaccines to communities around the globe.

• Related 糖心Vlog官方 News story: Ebola vaccine developed by 糖心Vlog官方 can withstand high heat, February 22, 2019

According to Lehrer, once developed, such a vaccine may be able to rapidly address emerging outbreaks, such as the infection that appeared in Guinea recently. The collaborators believe that this technology may be an important contribution to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci鈥檚 proposed idea to against the top 20 viral families that may also cause pandemics.

“Having such a platform available would likely enable broader and faster worldwide vaccination campaigns addressing future health emergencies. In addition, the ability to combine antigens in the formulation also enables generation of potentially broader protective vaccines,” Lehrer said.

COVID-19 vaccine update

Since March 2020, Lehrer has also been working with Soligenix on a promising thermostable COVID-19 vaccine. “While much progress has been made since the initial announcement of our collaborative research, we are actively working on further analysis if the neutralizing potential of the vaccine candidate against a number of virus variants,” he said. The vaccine is being developed using the same thermostable platform that was used for filovirus vaccines and has demonstrated promising results in mice and non-human primates.

presenting the team鈥檚 findings has been published in Frontiers in Immunology in October 2020. A further publication is currently undergoing peer review and is

like this focused on preventing and curing infectious and emerging diseases, including COVID-19 (Account fund: #129-7310-4, ).

This research is an example of 糖心Vlog官方 M膩noa鈥檚 goal of (PDF), one of four goals identified in the (PDF), updated in December 2020.

There is more positive news to report about the Ebola subunit vaccine candidate developed by University of Hawaiʻi at M膩noa scientist Axel Lehrer. The potential vaccine remains viable in extreme heat conditions for several months, which is especially important where the disease outbreaks so far have begun in rural, spread-out areas of hot, dry West Africa.

In his scientific article, Lehrer demonstrates his vaccine can sustain immunogenicity, the ability to provoke an immune response in the body, after being stored at 104° F for up to 12 weeks.

“None of the other Ebola vaccines under development have the ability to withstand high temperatures, which is an ongoing concern in areas of the world where Filoviruses are endemic,” said Lehrer, an assistant professor in the at 糖心Vlog官方 M膩noa鈥檚 John A. Burns School of Medicine.

“The ability to stabilize our vaccine candidate to retain immunogenicity may not only have an impact on logistics, but also has the potential to reach more persons in need with fewer vaccine doses. This would be a tremendous advantage, especially in endemic areas, increasing the number of people receiving sufficient doses of the vaccine to protect them from disease.”

Lehrer said he and his team are very encouraged by these preliminary results and look forward to their continuing collaborations with , a late-stage biopharmaceutical company based in New Jersey and Lehrer’s Hawaiʻi-based Ebola subunit vaccine collaborator to further develop vaccines for Ebola and the filovirus.

The paper was published in the .

—By Tina Shelton

Editor’s note: The federal government withdrew grant funding for this research in 2025.

John Berestecky, a microbiology professor, is on a mission in Liberia, and his spirit is unstoppable.

This past summer, Berestecky accompanied three Kapiʻolani CC and University of Hawaiʻi at M膩noa students to help with Ebola and Lassa virus research at the University of Liberia in Monrovia.

“We wanted to demonstrate that we could put together a laboratory here on short notice and conduct decent science in this environment,” Berestecky said, adding that the most challenging part about the project was the country驶s underdeveloped infrastructure.

Berestecky鈥檚 goal is to forge a collaboration between 糖心Vlog官方 and the University of Liberia, which will lead to a graduate and research program in emerging viral diseases at the latter.

Kapiʻolani CC student Melissa Takaaze worked with him at the University of Liberia over the summer. “The work can be done and it can be done well,” said Takaaze. “I am proud and humbled to be a part of that experience, to be able to demonstrate the way that we are able to overcome these obstacles and perform great work.”

Berestecky hopes to involve the biotechnology and medical laboratory technician programs at Kapiʻolani CC as well as the graduate education resources of the Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology programs at the 糖心Vlog官方 M膩noa John A. Burns School of Medicine, where he is an affiliate graduate faculty member.

Takaaze currently serves as an IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) student researcher in Berestecky鈥檚 laboratory at the medical school. Brien Haun, a graduate student in the Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology, and senior biology major Kialanei Garalde-Machida were also part of the Liberia team.

Before he began teaching, Berestecky served in the Peace Corps in Liberia from 1979 to 1982. Over the years, he has made numerous trips to Liberia and, in 2013 took a leave of absence to work with its university to revamp and renew its biology and chemistry curricula.

More information on INBRE may be found at:

—By Louise Yamamoto

oceanographers and are part of a multi-institutional team from four universities that received a $6 million grant to investigate how the information encoded in the genomes of viruses alters the properties of cells and influences the outcome of viral infections.

The four-year project is supported by the (NSF) (EPSCoR). This collaboration is among eight projects across the U.S., totaling $41.7 million, that aim to build U.S. research capacity in understanding the relationship in organisms between their genes and their physical characteristics. Uncovering this genotype-to-phenotype relationship holds potential for improved crop yields, better prediction of human disease risk and new drug therapies.

“Over the past several decades, scientists and engineers have made massive strides in decoding, amassing and storing genomic data,” said Denise Barnes, NSF EPSCoR head in a . “But understanding how genomics influence phenotype remains one of the more profound challenges in science. These awards lay the groundwork for closing some of the biggest gaps in biological knowledge and developing interdisciplinary teams needed to address the challenges.”

Environmental microbes

From water and soil to the human gut, single-celled microbes abound and viruses are present right alongside them constantly altering how the microbes interact. The relationship between viruses and microbes is complex and variable. In some cases a virus will infect a microbe, hijack its machinery and begin replicating, eventually killing the host. In other cases, a virus will infect a microbe but, rather than killing it, will fundamentally change how the microbe behaves. Often the change is beneficial for the infected microbe giving it a competitive advantage over other uninfected microbes. How these various processes work within complex microbial communities is still largely a mystery.

“A much more realistic accounting of the nuanced relationships between viruses and microbes is going to be needed if we want to fully understand how the Earth鈥檚 microbiome keeps our planet habitable” said Steward.

At 糖心Vlog官方, Steward and Edwards will use their one-million-dollar portion of the grant to focus specifically on viruses infecting marine phytoplankton—microscopic organisms that conduct photosynthesis. Phytoplankton serve as the base of marine and freshwater food chains and produce more than half the oxygen on Earth. Viruses are a major source of mortality for phytoplankton and can dramatically alter how the food generated by photosynthesis is distributed in the marine food web.

Steward and Edwards will investigate a diverse collection of phytoplankton-virus systems that Steward’s group has isolated from waters around Oʻahu.

“These include viruses infecting branches of the tree of life from which viruses had never been isolated, as well as some of the largest known viruses,” said Edwards. “We will also perform laboratory evolution experiments, aiming to unravel the intricate host-virus dynamics that often resemble molecular arms races.”

“A major goal for this project is to move beyond just generating more sequence data and focus on interpretation,” said Steward. “We are awash in environmental sequence data, because it is now cheap and easy to generate, but getting the most value from this resource requires experimental work.”

A nano-lab for observing viruses and cells

To make the experimental work easier, one of the objectives of the multi-university collaboration is to develop and adapt microfluidics technology. Microfluidics will enable the scientists to examine鈥攊n a droplet of water smaller than mist鈥攈ow a single virus and a single microbial cell interact. They aim to make new tools and resources in microfluids technology available to the broader scientific community.

One of the goals of the multi-university collaboration is to develop new technology to enable scientists to examine—in a droplet of water smaller than mist—how a single virus and a single microbial cell interact. They aim to make new tools and resources in microfluids technology available to the broader scientific community.

“Imagine doing a classic microbiology experiment with test tubes and culture plates. Our research would take all of those test tubes and cultures and reduce them down to a tiny droplet 100 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair,” said K. Eric Wommack from the (UD) who will lead the team of marine scientists.

Operating under the principle that oil and water don’t mix, the interdisciplinary team will create devices the size of a microscope slide, equipped with tiny incubation chambers filled with oil, to isolate individual droplets of water injected with a syringe. Molds for these microfluidic devices will be fabricated in UD’s state-of-the-art聽聽for collaborators including Steward and Edwards.

The research team also will create the Viral Informatics Resource for Genome Organization to manage troves of genomic data on viruses and make inferences about how unknown viral populations might behave. Scientists are generating enormous amounts environmental sequence data, but getting the most value from this resource will require experimental work.

—By Marcie Grabowski

University of Hawaiʻi vaccine researcher Axel Lehrer, has received a $6.35 million grant to test whether the Ebola vaccine formula he has developed will protect against two additional viruses in the same family.

The Ebola vaccine that 糖心Vlog官方 has created is “heat stable,” which means it does not need refrigeration, and could be easily transported and stored in the hottest climates on Earth, like Africa, where the deadly viruses have struck in the past. Expanding the heat-stable vaccine to work against all three of the related viruses could speed up the protection of health workers and others as soon as an outbreak occurs. The first inoculations could occur even before public health experts know which exact type of hemorrhagic fever has struck.

The is partnering with two biomedical companies—Honolulu-based Hawaiʻi Biotech, Inc. and New Jersey-based Soligenex, Inc.—to develop the potentially trivalent (works on all three viruses) vaccine. Other partners include the University of Texas Medical Branch and BIOQUAL, Inc.

“Filoviruses are endemic in areas of the world where the power supply can be uncertain, making a thermostable Ebola vaccine particularly valuable,” said Lehrer, an assistant professor the . “We are delighted to have been awarded this grant to further develop a thermostabilized subunit vaccine for Ebola and look forward to continuing our collaboration with Soligenix, and Hawaiʻi Biotech, Inc.”

Lehrer believes that when the new work funded by this grant is completed, the next step would be to obtain funding (perhaps a combination of public funding and corporate funding) to move the vaccine into a clinical trial.

With funding, and the necessary drug regulatory approvals, he believes his heat-stable vaccine candidate could be ready to be on the market within five to ten years.

For more go to the .

—By Tina Shelton

has named Professor its 2017 ARCS Scientist of the Year. The Scientist of the Year award recognizes a University of Hawaiʻi researcher whose advancement of knowledge in a STEM field and mentorship of new scientists mirrors the ARCS Foundation mission of advancing science in America.

Yanagihara, an expert in emerging diseases, will discuss Hantaviruses: A Personal Journey of Discovery and New Beginnings at a free pauhana talk beginning at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 14 in the Agricultural Sciences Building on the 糖心Vlog官方 M膩noa campus.

Hantaviruses are a relatively newly discovered genre spread by rodents with sometimes fatal consequences to humans. Yanagihara, a professor in the and director of 糖心Vlog官方鈥檚 , is considered to be one of the top hantavirus researchers in the world. He studies the appearance of diseases such as Ebola, measles, hepatitis C and HIV among populations isolated by viertue of genetics, culture and/or geography.

The talk is co-sponsored by the . It is free and open to the public, but reservations are requested to ensure adequate seating. Email arcshonolulu@gmail.com.

More about the ARCS Foundation

ARCS Foundation is a nonprofit organization that works to advance science in America through support of outstanding graduate students in STEM fields. The Honolulu Chapter has awarded more than $2 million to 糖心Vlog官方 M膩noa doctoral candidates since 1974.

A team of scientists from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa showed for the first time that many novel viruses are present in the fluids circulating deep in the rocky crust of the seafloor known as the ocean basement. Their also provides evidence that the viruses are actively infecting the many unusual microorganisms that live in the basement.

Viruses are often thought of as a nuisance because of the familiar diseases they cause—common colds and the flu, for example. However, viruses infect every living thing on earth and viral infections have been one of the major creative forces that shape the nature of life on our planet. The first viruses likely originated at the dawn of life billions of years ago. Through relentless cycles of infections, viruses have helped drive the evolution of the diverse life found on our planet and their influence continues to this day.

Exploring the deep frontier

“The ocean basement was one of the last major habitats on Earth for which we had no information on the number and types of viruses present,” said lead author Olivia Nigro, a post-doctoral researcher of . “The volume of water that moves under the seafloor through the ocean basement is enormous. Annually, it is equivalent to the flow of all the rivers on the planet combined.”

Hydrothermal vents and plumes, like those found in Hawaiʻi at Lōʻihi seamount, are the most spectacular evidence of that flow.

“Despite the massive scale of flow through the seafloor and its importance for understanding the chemical balance of our oceans, our view of the unusual microorganisms that live in this fluid and how they interact is still very sketchy,” said , oceanography professor and lead investigator for the project.

It is very challenging to get a clean sample of water from rocks buried under hundreds of feet of sediment at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. To do this, the team took advantage of devices designed to plug holes drilled deep into the seafloor called Circulation Obviation Retrofit Kits, or CORKs. The bottom of the CORKs seal off the fluids in the basement and transport samples of that fluid to a sampling port that extends a few meters above the seafloor. The CORKs sampled were over one-and-half miles under the ocean and required an autonomous underwater vehicle to connect the sample vessels, open and close the valves, and return the samples to the surface.

The researchers used microscope and DNA analyses to count and characterize the viruses in the fluids and to detect viral DNA inside of cells. This pioneering work provided the first look at the diverse and unusual viruses infecting the microorganisms in warm basaltic crust, which forms the very foundation of the Hawaiian Islands. Surprisingly, many of them resemble the lemon- and rod-shaped viruses found in hot springs on land, like those in Yellowstone National Park, even though these two habitats are very far apart.

Looking deep, deep into the past

“One of the likely places for the origin of the first living cells and viruses was in hydrothermally active seafloor,” said Nigro. “Analyzing viruses from this remote habitat helps us flesh out the deep branches on the virus family tree so we can better understand their origins, their contributions to the history of life, and how they influence the activities of microbial life in the crust.”

“The data we obtained provides clues about the nature of a microbial world that lies hidden deep in the roots of these volcanic islands,” said Steward. “Through their interactions with rock and water, these deep-dwelling communities of microbes and their viruses are invisible engineers contributing to the chemical balance of our oceans.”

New funding from the (NSF) will allow the researchers to collect additional samples in the Atlantic Ocean. The conditions in the crust there are very different from those in the Pacific oceanic basement, and the team hopes to determine how these different conditions influence the community of the microbes and their viruses.

Inspiration and support

This work was inspired by and was made possible in part by the pioneering work of the late James P. Cowen, an esteemed and long-serving faculty member in the Department of Oceanography at 糖心Vlog官方 Mānoa. The researchers dedicated the paper to him in recognition of the encouragement and support that he provided to the team that was instrumental to the success of the project.

The NSF funded this work through two of its Science and Technology Centers, the located at the University of Southern California and the at 糖心Vlog官方 Mānoa.

—By Marcie Grabowski