Albert Einstein College of Medicine has received a USD 13.8 million NIAID U19 cooperative agreement to lead PROVIDENT, a 13-institution consortium developing "plug-and-play" vaccine and therapeutic antibody platforms against emerging enveloped RNA viruses with epidemic and pandemic potential.
The award targets three viral families — Nairoviridae, Hantaviridae, and Paramyxoviridae — that collectively encompass pathogens such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, hantaviruses, and Nipah virus, for which no licensed vaccines exist. Principal investigator Kartik Chandran, based in Albert Einstein's microbiology and immunology department, leads the consortium spanning academic, government, and industry partners, with commercialization pathways integrated from the outset.
PROVIDENT operates in two phases. In Phase I, four research projects will map host factors critical to viral pathogenesis, engineer optimized vaccine antigens using structure-guided design, evaluate RNA vaccine platforms for immunogenicity and protective efficacy, and build an adaptive monoclonal antibody discovery pipeline. In Phase II, the consortium will stress-test its prototype-derived blueprints against divergent "outgroup" viruses through timed exercises — termed sprints — with a stated target of producing a candidate ready to immunize animals within 10 days of identifying a new outbreak virus. Cross-family validation across nairoviruses, hantaviruses, and paramyxoviruses is intended to establish the generalizability of the platform rather than its performance against a single pathogen.
The platform-first framing distinguishes PROVIDENT from pathogen-specific vaccine programs. Rather than optimizing a single immunogen, the consortium is attempting to establish transferable blueprints that can be rapidly adapted when a novel related virus emerges — a design logic that reflects lessons from the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine rollout and from CEPI-funded efforts targeting WHO priority pathogens. Nonhuman primate models and proteomics-based host factor analysis are among the preclinical tools disclosed in the program goals.