CpG is conducting -- along with Research Triangle Institute International (RTI) and Duke University Medical Center, North Carolina, USA, and the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED), Kolkata -- a large-scale 5-year international study on infectious diseases funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA. The aim is to study variability of immune response of individuals to vaccines against specific water-borne infectious pathogens.

Communicable diseases have a high prevalence in underprivileged areas of tropical and sub-tropical countries. The response of different individuals upon natural exposure to the pathogens that cause these diseases, and concurrently to the vaccines against these pathogens, is highly variable. The causes of the observed variability in response are not clearly understood. CpG is engaged in identifying the causal factors that underlie the variability in immune response across individuals to enable development of vaccines with greater efficacy for protecting individuals against these pathogens that cause high mortality and morbidity.

In this study individuals living in endemic areas were recruited with written informed consent following the ethical guidelines and approvals of the NIH and the Government of India. Study participants were vaccinated with the relevant vaccine. Biospecimens were collected from study participants at specific intervals of time before and after vaccination. Further, in conformity with good ethical practices, all family members of each study participant were also vaccinated (with consent) free-of-cost. Immunological assays, protein expression studies and determination of genomic sequences are being done for each study participant. These data are then being statistically analyzed to correlate immune response to vaccines with genetic and proteomic profiles, with a view to identifying genes/proteins that modulate response-variability.