As part of a 5-year multimillion-dollar federal bio-defense initiative, researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina are working on a vaccine against the Plague, which is viewed as a potential agent for bioterrorism.

At a meeting in Chicago this week, Dr. Steven B. Mizel gave an update on their efforts. He reported that injecting a protein taken from plague bacteria into mice - a common method of vaccination - produces little if any response in the animal’s immune system.

But if a bacterial protein called flagellin is added to the vaccine, immune responses increase 500,000-fold. Flagellin has whiplike appendages that help bacteria move around in their environment.

Mice immunized with the combination vaccine and challenged with a lethal dose of Yersinia Pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, survived while control mice died within 3 days of challenge. The immunized mice were protected for at least 3 months after vaccination.

In light of these promising results, Mizel is now looking to see if immunized monkeys are protected against the Plague. If they are, then efforts will be initiated to begin studies in humans.

The development of a vaccine against the plague is a “major goal of the bio-defense initiative,” Mizel said in a statement.