Alaska scientist receives $1.6 million award for vaccine research

(University of Alaska Fairbanks) A treatment credited with saving about nine million lives a year worldwide and bringing major human diseases including smallpox, tetanus, whooping cough and polio under some degree of control is said to have begun with a milkmaid, a boy, a cow and a doctor about two hundred years ago.Yet in all that time, the details of how the treatment actually works are still unclear. Dr. Andrea Ferrante, a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist, hopes to change that.