TRIAD Program

Overview

The TRIAD program, also known as the Translational Immunology Research and Accelerated [Vaccine] Development program, is based within the University of Rhode Island Biotechnology Program (Greg Paquette, Ph.D., Director), Department of Cell and Molecular Biology (Jay Sperry, Ph.D., Chair), and College of the Environment and Life Sciences.

TRIAD is pioneering the development and application of an integrated “gene to vaccine” in silico, in vitro, and in vivo vaccine design process to meet the dual threats of emerging infectious diseases and engineered bio-warfare/bio-terror agents. Under the leadership of Annie De Groot, M.D., the TRIAD program has selected Category A pathogens F. tularensis, Category B agents Burkholderia pseudomallei and Burkholderia mallei, and emerging infectious diseases (HCV, H. pylori, tick-borne diseases) as the focal point of the program's work.

This program directly addresses the objectives of the Cooperative Centers for Translational Research on Human Immunology and Bio-defense (U19) RFA-AI-08-014. These are: (1) developing medical countermeasures that are effective against a variety of pathogens and toxins; (2) developing technologies that can be widely applied to improve classes of products, and (3) establishing platforms that can reduce the time and cost required to create new vaccines.

In addition, the goal of TRIAD is to train vaccine developers in immunoinformatics practice and theory and to motivate them to apply their new skills by putting the TRIAD cost-and-effort-saving vaccine design tools directly into their hands.

“This (TRIAD) grant will fund translational research for the development of human vaccines, thus all of the work to be performed under TRIAD funding is directed at moving vaccine products towards the clinic,” De Groot explains.

Objectives

The TRIAD program has three main objectives:

  1. Illustrate the use of the gene-to-vaccine tools and techniques for four vaccine development programs: Multi-intracellular Pathogen Vaccine (Tularemia and B. pseudomallei, B. mallei), Helicobacter pylori, Hepatitis C, and Tick-borne diseases through collaborations with pilot grant investigators. 
  2. Advocate use of the gene-to-vaccine tools and train memberst of the research community to exploit these tools through a pilot grant program that, in addition to pilot grants includes symposia and workshops.
  3. Create an accessible web portal containing a core collection of investigative gene-to-vaccine immunoinformatics tools (TRIAD Toolkit Core), as well as validation techniques (CMI core).