Q&A with Dr. Brittany Hartwell: Activating Frontline Immune Defenses in the Nose with Hitchhiking Vaccines

When the COVID-19 pandemic began in the spring of 2020, Brittany Hartwell was in the midst of her postdoctoral training, working on mucosal vaccines for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). While much of the world shut down, Hartwell kept conducting research, but now with a focus on developing a vaccine for COVID-19.

“While there were many challenges inherent to that time, it led to some of the most exciting research of my career so far,” she said. “It actually ended up changing my research trajectory.”

Now an assistant professor in biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota, Hartwell received a 2025 PhRMA Foundation Faculty Starter Grant in Drug Delivery for her research developing mucosal vaccines for infectious diseases like HIV, SARS-CoV-2, and influenza.

While traditional injected vaccines are effective at activating “backup” defenses in the blood, they do not typically activate robust “frontline” defenses in mucosal tissues where transmission takes place, such as through the nose. Hartwell aims to overcome the challenges of mucosal delivery by attaching the vaccine to a naturally occurring protein in the body, allowing it to “hitchhike” across mucosal barriers in the nose to activate frontline immunity.

Watch this video to learn more about Hartwell and her research.

One of Hartwell’s students, Madison Seefeld, received the PhRMA Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in Drug Delivery for her research in this area. Watch her interview.

Learn more about the PhRMA Foundation’s fellowship and grant opportunities. Check out more researcher stories on our blog.