Professor's vaccine research receives recognition

Nanowerk, a website devoted to the nanosciences, recently posted an ASU News article detailing the research of Biodesign Institute professor Yung Chang.

Recently, Chang and her colleagues have launched an ambitious new project, designed to attack nicotine dependence in a radically new way. The research effort, pursued under a new $3.3 million grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, will attempt to design a vaccine conferring immunity to nicotine, using nanoscale structures assembled from DNA.

Chang, an immunologist, has been developing a method for incorporating key vaccine components onto self-assembling, nanoscale carrier molecules. With combined effort from a multidicsplinary team, the research group’s aim is to identify two to three vaccine candidates that can be moved toward further clinical testing.