Creation of a Québec Human Immunology Network to Support the Provincial Vaccine Ecosystem
September 11, 2025 – Funded activities
As part of its Vaccine Technology Innovations program, Médicament Québec is supporting four collaborative research initiatives bringing together academia and industry partners. Discover Prof. Piccirillo’s project focused on developing an advanced human immunology platform.
While preclinical studies are valuable, they provide only limited insights into the efficacy and safety of vaccines under development. Advanced human immunology platforms offer a more powerful alternative for vaccine discovery and characterization, providing the industry with an essential advantage.
Dr. Piccirillo’s team will develop an advanced human immunology platform designed to generate crucial information for vaccine development—such as a better understanding of mechanisms of action, as well as data to reduce risk and fully characterize vaccine candidates. This platform will help scientists and companies developing new vaccines to better assess their products and the immune responses they trigger.
The platform will function as a comprehensive toolkit, including:
- A human tonsil organoid model
- A super-resolution microscopy technique
- Multi-institutional teams developing assays to evaluate B- and T-cell responses
- Artificial intelligence tools generating comprehensive profiles of vaccine-induced responses
This research activity will involve collaborators actively contributing to tool development. Several researchers are joining the project:
- Drs. Brian Ward, Gregory Fonseca, Bruce Mazer, and Martin Olivier from the RI-MUHC
- Dr. Paul Wiseman from McGill University
- Dr. Andrés Finzi from the CHUM Research Centre
- Dr. Natan Bensoussan from the CIUSSS-NIM
- Drs. Hélène Decaluwe and Morgan Craig from CHU Sainte-Justine
Industrial partners include:
- CellCarta, strengthening T-cell phenotyping efforts
- Aramis Biotechnologies, providing vaccines and human volunteer samples for proof-of-concept studies
This project is supported by the Government of Quebec through Médicament Québec, which is investing $1.5 million. An additional $1.2 million from industry partners brings the total investment to $2.7 million.
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