BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – The University of Vermont’s College of Medicine has been selected as one of 12 U.S. medical centers to conduct an anthrax vaccine study.

The college’s infectious disease unit will spend the next year injecting as many as 50 paid volunteers with a new vaccine.

“We’re not giving anyone anthrax,” said Dr. Beth Kirkpatrick, assistant professor of medicine and principal investigator of the study. “This actually will never cause anthrax.”

The shots administer various dosages of protective antigen, one of the components of the deadly anthrax bacteria. Protective antigen alone cannot cause anthrax, but it can spur the immune system to make antibodies to protect against an anthrax infection. To gauge the vaccine’s effectiveness, Kirkpatrick and others will monitor the test subjects to see how their immune systems respond.

“You can’t give someone the vaccine and then check to see if it works by giving someone anthrax,” Kirkpatrick said. “That’s unethical.”

The study is sponsored by the biopharmaceutical company VaxGen, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The trial is just one step in bringing the new vaccine to market. Participants in Vermont and the other 11 sites will help determine the proper vaccine dosage to be used in a second trial. That test will have thousands of participants. If the vaccine proves safe and effective, Kirkpatrick said, the U.S. government has a standing order for 25 million doses.

“They really want this vaccine out in two years,” Kirkpatrick said.

AP-ES-04-25-04 1415EDT