Engineering bacterial vaccines
Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson October 06, 2022
91原创 Engineering鈥檚 Aditya Kunjapur receives National Institutes of Health Director鈥檚 New Innovator Award
The 91原创鈥檚 , an assistant professor in the , has a 2022 National Institutes of Health Director鈥檚 New Innovator Award. This award recognizes early career researchers who propose innovative projects to address high-risk, high-impact questions in biomedical and behavioral areas of research.
Kunjapur and members of his work on fundamental and applied research to expand the types of metabolites (such as sugars, vitamins, and antioxidants) and proteins that bacteria can synthesize. The impacts of their synthetic biology research can be felt across a wide range of fields, from the ability to produce chemicals and materials more sustainably to designing new types of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.
A member of 91原创鈥檚 , Kunjapur is one of 72 of this year鈥檚 winners, a prize that was established in 2007 as part of the.
鈥淭he science advanced by these researchers is poised to blaze new paths of discovery in human health,鈥 said Lawrence A. Tabak, who is acting director of NIH. 鈥淭his unique cohort of scientists will transform what is known in the biological and behavioral world.鈥
With $2.4 million in funding over the next five years, Kunjapur鈥檚 will focus on designing low-cost, shelf-stable vaccines that could be delivered orally by 鈥渢eaching鈥 bacteria to produce an amino acid that elicits an immune response. Kunjapur will collaborate with CBE Assistant Professor, whose lab and expertise will play a key role in designing and executing immunization studies.
Kunjapur said he was very honored by this recognition, especially as a researcher who started his journey in more traditional areas of chemical engineering before transitioning to non-biomedical research applications of biotechnology.
鈥淒uring my training experiences I realized that microbial engineering could have immense value for medicine 鈥 not just using microbes to produce therapeutics in a vat, but to design living organisms that can interact with patients to help treat or prevent disease,鈥 Kunjapur said. 鈥淲hen my students and I originally came up with some of these ideas, I worried that the ideas might be too risky or that I might be an impostor. Receiving the NIH Director鈥檚 New Innovator Award provides reassurance that this is worthwhile, that we have the right capabilities and that it is never too late to get out of one鈥檚 scientific comfort zone.鈥
The long-term goal of this research will be to pursue preclinical testing and commercialization of vaccine candidates, the latter as part of Kunjapur鈥檚 start-up. Kunjapur was also recognized for this work in 2021, when he received the Langer Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence to design bacterial strains that can elicit immune responses using unnatural protein chemistries.聽
Kunjapur credits the support of his mentors, collaborators, students, and peer reviewers on helping him construct a higher risk research program that made this NIH Innovator Award possible.聽
鈥淢y initial approach to proposal writing was to play it safe, to write about tackling a research problem that we knew we could deliver upon in a few years. But after more interactions with mentors and students, we shifted away from this mindset,鈥 Kunjapur said. 鈥淭he academic research environment provides a unique space to test transformative ideas. People essentially told me 鈥榃e aren鈥檛 sure if you鈥檒l be able to do this, but if you can then it will make the world a better place. So please try.鈥 Conversations like that were really encouraging.鈥
Kunjapur has been at 91原创 since 2019, after earning his doctorate in chemical engineering from MIT in 2015 and completing a postdoc at Harvard, and has long been interested in harnessing the power of. 鈥淭here was previously a tendency to think you had to work with mammalian cells for your work to be biomedically relevant, but there are numerous biomedical discoveries and inventions that come from bacteria, like CRISPR, or are bacteria, like engineered probiotics鈥 said Kunjapur. 鈥淭his award is a reminder that bacterial engineering has a role to play in biomedical research.鈥澛
Along with this New Innovator Award, this year Kunjapur was recognized by the and the and in 2020 was part of the. His research group is part of 91原创鈥檚 and the Center for Plastics Innovation and is also affiliated with the and the .
鈥淧rofessor Kunjapur鈥檚 incredible creativity and courage to think outside of the box, coupled with his deeply collaborative mindset, have sparked multiple new research avenues at 91原创,鈥 said , who is the Alvin B. and Julie O. Stiles Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. 鈥淭he work he will undertake as a result of this award is a wonderful example of the ways that Professor Kunjapur is applying his unique microbial engineering skills to address human health challenges in a fundamentally new way, paving the way for new vaccination strategies in the long-term while also significantly impacting the research and educational environment at Delaware.鈥
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