Viral outbreaks with pandemic potential have and will continue to threaten our global community and health, highlighting the need for pandemic preparedness and vaccine development. The Mount Sinai Center for Vaccine Research and Pandemic Preparedness (C-VARPP) is exceptionally well positioned to conduct research at scale that will drive insights and innovation to handle current gaps in knowledge and investigate new threats. The mission of The Center is to enhance our knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 immune protection and to better protect our communities from future pandemics through research and innovation.
Our goal is to better understand viral pathogens, mitigate risk through the creation of new vaccines and treatments, and to make sure that the communities that we serve remain healthy and informed.
Our research during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has provided critical insights to our community, to academic peers, lawmakers, and to the government to help understand vaccine efficacy, public health needs, and our populations’ immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infections and vaccination.
The Center for Vaccine Research and Pandemic Preparedness builds on existing and highly successful infrastructures of the Personalized Virology Initiative (PVI), established by the Simon Laboratory and the Krammer Laboratory. PVI provides the regulatory framework through observational clinical studies that have pioneered protein engineering and serology research that gives qualitative and quantitative measurements for immune responses to infections and vaccinations. Together, C-VARPP optimizes and implements current and future knowledge to generate diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics.
Outreach
The outreach efforts for The Mount Sinai Center for Vaccine Research and Pandemic Preparedness extend to provide science literacy and mitigate vaccine hesitancy in neighborhoods served by the Mount Sinai Health System.
Our ongoing translational studies are conducted by a diverse group of highly motivated staff and include diverse and vulnerable patient populations. Given our ongoing successful collaborations with Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West, we plan to broaden access to research for our study participants.
Our participants are partners in our research endeavors; without them, this research is not possible. C-VARPP aims to give back and do its part to increase clinical research literacy in our community and optimize the research experience for our participant partners. We believe that The Center for Vaccine Research and Pandemic Preparedness is well positioned to improve disparities in clinical research through novel means of research engagement, including participant exclusive study webinars, community-based outreach, and more.