Federal Grant Award Summary

Vanderbilt University received a $448,089 Project Grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855), awarded February 3, 2026, with completion targeted for January 31, 2028. The award supports the development and testing of TOLEVAX, a tolerogenic vaccine platform that engineers extracellular vesicles (EVs) derived from mesenchymal stem cells to deliver self-antigens and promote antigen-specific immune tolerance. The research addresses the significant public health challenge of autoimmune diseases, which affect approximately 25 million Americans and currently lack curative treatments.

The primary deliverable is the establishment of TOLEVAX as a therapeutic strategy for promoting immunological tolerance through coordinated delivery of autoantigens and immunoregulatory cargo to antigen-presenting cells. The project focuses on developing exogenous loading methodologies for peptide antigens onto EV surfaces and validating this approach in a multiple sclerosis disease model. Upon successful development, this platform is designed to offer a disease-modifying alternative to current non-specific immunosuppressive treatments, potentially enabling antigen-specific tolerance without the systemic immunosuppression and associated infection and malignancy risks inherent to existing therapies.