Program Manager: Dr. Michael V. Callahan
 DARPA’s Rapid Vaccine Assessment (RVA) Program is developing an Artificial Immune System (AIS) that will serve as an in vitro test platform to accurately test the human response to vaccines.
The project, now in its second phase, has developed a system that mimics critical components of the human immune system. The AIS uses differentiated, matched cells to test candidate vaccines for effectiveness against many different types of patients. The AIS consists of an artificial vaccination site (VS) that contains critical elements of the dermal (skin) immune system. When vaccines are introduced to the VS, specialized immune cells migrate to this site, then ingest, transport and present the vaccine components to the lymphocyte compartments that contain matched T and B lymphocytes and dendritic cells, resulting in the in-vitro production of an antibody.
The prototype AIS will be a fully developed, automated 96-well plate capable of testing a number of vaccines against large numbers of human cells. This system will be used for testing new vaccine constructs against threat agents with reduced development time, reliance on rodent models, and cost.
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