Nadeem Khan awarded NIH Grant

Dr. Nadeem Khan, Assistant Professor with UND's Department of Biomedical Sciences, has been awarded a 2-year $387,750 award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

This 2-year grant will support the studies on a newly developed adjuvanted vaccine in the Khan lab against bacterial pneumonia. Streptococcus pneumonia is one of the major pathogens causing bacterial pneumonia, and currently available vaccines do not target all more than 90 bacterial serotypes. The vaccine developed in Khan's lab will address this issue of addressing the bacterial diversity and could be used as a universal vaccine effective against all bacterial serotypes. Specifically, the vaccine will study the role of enhanced T-cells responses in developing antibodies against higher functionality to kill bacteria. Khan is a trained vaccine immunologist and has over a decade of experience in pneumococcal vaccine development. Some of those candidates he investigated transitioned to clinical trials held in Bangladesh.