The Canadian Center for Vaccinology in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is a collaboration of Dalhousie University, the IWK Health Centre, and Capital Health. It was established to develop, implement, and evaluate vaccine technologies and vaccines for infectious diseases that have a significant impact on Canadian and global health and to train experts in these critical and evolving fields. This integrated, interdisciplinary research program brings together investigators from diverse disciplines to focus on vaccine discovery and evaluation. The collaboration of researchers in basic biomedical, clinical, and social sciences and the humanities provides a continuum of vaccine research from basic microbiological and molecular research in vaccine discovery and development, to translational research—research that takes basic science to marketable product—such as vaccine safety and efficacy studies, to evaluation research, encompassing clinical trials as well as vaccine program and policy evaluation. Social sciences and humanities research is integrated with both vaccine discovery and evaluation; it addresses a wide range of ethical, legal, and societal issues that inform policy and practice. facilities include laboratories for microbiological and molecular research, ambulatory clinical trial facilities, data analysis, videoconferencing/telemedicine capabilities and training. The Sanofi Pasteur Vaccine Challenge Unit / Clinical Research Unit, a 5,400 sq. ft., ten-bed inpatient unit with isolation rooms, is the first of its kind in Canada and, with less than a dozen such facilities worldwide, at the leading edge of global vaccine research. A Containment Level 3 laboratory was certified for operation in 2011, the only Level 3 laboratory of its kind in the Atlantic region.
