# Fusion: Vaccine conjugate technology to advance vaccine safety and efficacy

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA · 2020 · $635,274

## Abstract

Project Abstract
The primary objective of this project is to advance technology to improve the safety of vaccines
while maintaining or boosting efficacy. By chemically conjugating our novel synthetic TLR7/8
agonists directly to recombinant antigens, our conjugate vaccines provide robust cellular and
humoral immune responses with substantially less vaccine side-effects. While conjugated to
antigen our adjuvant molecule is in a reduced potency prodrug form, yet still yields a strong
cellular and humoral immune response because the adjuvant and antigen are always delivered
to the same endosome of dendritic cells. This closely mimics the natural process of pathogen
infection much more closely than traditional admixed adjuvant + antigen vaccines whereby cells
can be exposed to antigen or adjuvant individually leading to no or low effective immunity and
unwanted inflammation. We will further improve the therapeutic index of adjuvant-antigen
conjugate vaccines by using linker technology that maintains the adjuvant potency but targeted
to the immune cells where it’s needed to reduce potential side-effects.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9928358
- **Project number:** 5R01AI137146-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA
- **Principal Investigator:** DAVID Jay BURKHART
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $635,274
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-06-18 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9928358

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9928358, Fusion: Vaccine conjugate technology to advance vaccine safety and efficacy (5R01AI137146-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9928358. Licensed CC0.

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