About Emory Children's Center - Vaccine Research Clinic

Check out our webpage to find out more about our clinic, the research we conduct, and our amazing faculty & staff.

Vision: To protect individuals from infectious diseases and enhance health and wellbeing for all.

Mission: To advance the development of safe, effective, and accessible vaccines and treatments by performing high quality clinical trials and epidemiology studies.

Values:

Integrity- Doing what is right
Teamwork- Working together
Service- Furthering the common welfare
Resilience- Persevering through challenges
Respect- Celebrating differences
Mentorship- Investing in the next generation

The Emory Children's Center - Vaccine Research Clinic (ECC-VRC) is built on the legacy of Dr. Harry L. Keyserling, who was a Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Emory University School of Medicine from 1982-2013 and a luminary in the fields of virology and clinical vaccinology. During his 30-year career at Emory, Dr. Keyserling conducted more than 90 vaccine clinical trials in children and adults. Among the pivotal studies he conducted were evaluations of vaccines to prevent Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae type B, meningococcus, measles, mumps, rubella, and influenza, among many others. At the time of his retirement, Dr. Keyserling had conducted at least one study on all the routine vaccines in the U.S. childhood immunization schedule.

Following Dr. Keyserling’s retirement in 2013, Dr. Evan J. Anderson became the Director of the ECC-VRC. Dr. Anderson was a Professor of Adult and Pediatric Infectious Diseases and joined the faculty of Emory in 2012. Dr. Anderson was multiple-PI for the Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit (VTEU) and the lead investigator in Georgia for influenza, RSV, and COVID-19 surveillance for the CDC Emerging Infections Program (EIP). Dr. Anderson played a pivotal role during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading vaccine clinical trials for adults and children which directly led to emergency use authorization and subsequent licensure. Under Dr. Anderson’s leadership, the ECC-VRC enrolled >1000 participants into COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials and worked on vaccine and therapeutic studies from A to Z, including anthrax, avian influenza vaccines (e.g., H3N2v, H7N9, H5N8), chikungunya, Ebola, hepatitis E, influenza, MVA (IMVAMUNE), norovirus, osteomyelitis, the ‘omics of response to vaccination, rotavirus, RSV, Staphylococcus aureus, tularemia, and Zika. During his 10 years at Emory, Dr. Anderson also oversaw significant growth of the ECC-VRC, including doubling the number of staff, expanding laboratory capabilities, leading in-hospital epidemiologic surveillance studies, and mentoring numerous students and trainees.

In 2023, Dr. Christina A. Rostad became the Director of the ECC-VRC, with Associate Director Dr. Satoshi Kamidani. Dr. Rostad and Dr. Kamidani look forward to building upon the visionary legacies of Dr. Keyserling and Dr. Anderson to advance safe and effective vaccines and to improve community health for all.

Networks

Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium

The Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium (IDCRC) and Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units (VTEUs) work in tandem with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) as a coordinated national and global network of scientific experts working to develop and test vaccines and other therapies to combat infectious diseases.

Visit the IDCRC Website

Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment

CISA is a national collaborating network of vaccine safety experts from the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office (ISO), eight medical research centers, and other partners. CISA provides consultations for U.S. healthcare providers with complex vaccine safety questions about their patients and conducts vaccine safety clinical research.

Visit the CDC CISA Website

Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network

The Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network (RDCRN) are an NIH-funded research network of 20 active consortia or research groups. We foster collaborative research among scientists to better understand how particular rare diseases progress and to develop improved approaches for diagnosis and treatment.

Visit the RDCRN Website

Overcoming COVID-19

The Overcoming COVID-19 study seeks to track and characterize the development of complications in children and young adults as a result of exposure to the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, one such outcome being Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C). Through real-time surveillance and reporting, as well as prospective enrollment of study participants with collection of blood and respiratory samples, this study intends to understand the risk factors and outcomes of COVID-19 critical illness in the pediatric population, define complications in young individuals thought to be related to SARS-CoV-2, identify predictive markers of these complications, and characterize the development and maintenance of adaptive immunity.

Visit the Overcoming COVID-19 Website