Todd Bradley, PhD

Vice Chair, CMRI IBC; Director of Immunogenomics, Genomic Medicine Center; Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Research Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Kansas School of Medicine

Full Biography

Todd Bradley, PhD, Genomic Medicine Center, received a $433,175 R21 award from the National Institutes of Health – National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The funding is for his study “Development of mosaic enterovirus mRNA vaccine to prevent hand, foot and mouth disease” and covers a project period of July 1, 2025-June 30, 2027.

Hand Foot Mouth Disease (HFMD) is primarily caused by human enterovirus serotype A viruses (HEV-A), and predominantly affects young children. Most cases result in mild flu-like symptoms and painful sores and rash, but severe complications can occur that involve the central nervous system, such as viral meningitis and encephalitis. Those can lead to serious illness and death. One challenge is that there are over 100 different types of human enteroviruses that can cause disease, making development of broad vaccines and immunotherapies difficult.

There is also concern that emerging viral strains could evolve to spread more easily and cause more serious illness in future viral outbreaks. As Dr. Bradley explains, currently, there are no antivirals or vaccines that target the broad diversity of viral strains that cause HFMD.

In this project. Dr. Bradley and his team plan to create an mRNA vaccine that protects against many types of the virus that causes HFMD, and to find special antibodies that could be used to treat people who get sick. They have used computational and AI tools that analyzed the viral sequences of HEV-A viruses around the world to design a six-part vaccine for HEV-A by combining different pieces of various HEV-A viruses together to make a cocktail that will generate immunity to a broad range of HEV-A viruses that cause disease.

“Our overall hypothesis is that computationally-designed mosaic HEV-A vaccines will create broader and more cross-reactive immune responses to the viruses that cause HFMD compared to traditional single strain-specific vaccines,” said Dr. Bradley.

The team will also isolate and characterize powerful antibodies that can fight off many different types of HEV-A viruses.

“This work is significant because it will lead to the development of a broad HEV-A vaccine that could be used as an effective vaccine for HFMD,” said Dr. Bradley. “It also establishes an innovative vaccine development platform that integrates computational design and mRNA-encoded virus-like particle technology that could also be applied to other pathogens where genetic variability is a challenge.”

Rangaraj Selvarangan, PhD, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine is a co-investigator on the study.

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.