Protecting Baby Elephants with mRNA Vaccines 🐘

TLDR: Nine elephant calves at the Houston, Fort Worth, Rosamond Gifford, and Cincinnati zoos, received a groundbreaking EEHV mRNA-LNP vaccine developed through the efforts between Baylor College of Medicine, Helix Biotech, Avanti Polar Lipids/Croda and partner zoos.

Every year, young Asian elephants confront a fatal threat. Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (EEHV) is a fast-moving, hemorrhagic disease that can take a healthy calf and put it into fatal decline in a matter of days. Zoos and conservation groups have made enormous strides in animal and veterinary care, yet EEHV continues to be one of the leading causes of death in calves.

For anyone who has spent time around elephants, this is a critical problem. The loss of a calf is emotionally devastating for caretakers and destabilizing for the herd. And scientifically, it represents one of the most stubborn bottlenecks in sustaining a healthy managed population.

Photo courtesy of the Cincinnati Zoo

A Persistent Challenge in Elephant Conservation

EEHV is not an introduced pathogen. It’s a family of herpesviruses carried naturally by elephants. In adults, it usually sits dormant, and as part of the background biology of the species. But in calves, the story is very different.

When the virus activates, the outcome can be catastrophic: rapid endothelial damage, internal bleeding, multi-organ involvement, and death. Detection is difficult because the outward signs often appear only after significant viral replication has already occurred. Even with aggressive antiviral treatment, survival rates remain low.

This has pushed researchers toward a logical conclusion: better diagnostics can help, but prevention is ultimately what will change the trajectory of this disease.

Leading the Fight at Baylor College of Medicine

At Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Paul Ling and his team have been working at the center of this problem for years. Their “Bench-to-Barn” initiative blends fundamental virology with on-the-ground veterinary work, an approach that recognizes that solving EEHV isn’t just a lab challenge; it’s an ecological and logistical one as well.

One of their major early breakthroughs was developing a rapid qPCR platform that allows zoos to monitor viral loads in near real time. That alone has saved calves by giving veterinarians a window to intervene before symptoms escalate.

But with diagnostics in place, the natural next step was also the hardest: designing a preventive vaccine for a virus that has resisted traditional approaches.

From Human Medicine to Elephant Health: mRNA Vaccines

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have reshaped how we think about rapid vaccine development in humans, so it’s no surprise that the Baylor team asked whether the same strategy could be adapted for elephants. The underlying idea is straightforward: teach the immune system to recognize critical EEHV proteins before a crisis occurs.

The execution, however, requires careful antigen selection, tailored mRNA construct design, and a delivery system suitable for a species with unique physiology.

Baylor researchers identified specific EEHV proteins capable of inducing a protective immune response and engineered mRNA constructs encoding those targets. Early testing has already begun in adult elephants, under veterinary oversight, including animals at the Houston Zoo. These studies focus on the fundamentals, i.e., safety, tolerability, and whether the vaccine generates measurable, durable antibodies.

This foundational work is essential before extending vaccination to calves, where the vaccine could have its greatest impact.

Rob Bernardy, Houston Zoo, Curator of Elephants: 

“Because of diagnostic techniques developed in Dr. Ling’s lab and the Houston Zoo’s EEHV protocol that we designed in conjunction with these diagnostics, an 8-year-old Asian elephant named Joy is alive today.  When Joy was just two years old, she became sick due to EEHV and quickly started to show late-stage symptoms that you see when an elephant is dying from this virus.  What normally would have been a tragic outcome was changed due to our collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine and the dedication and compassion of the teams working around her.  Today, she is an active member of her herd, an ambassador for her species, and an everyday reminder of the real-world impact that this work can have on this endangered species.”

Helix Biotech’s Role in Advancing This Work

At Helix Biotech, we’re honored to contribute to this effort. Our involvement centers on lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulation, translating the mRNA constructs provided by the Baylor College of Medicine into LNP systems that are stable, reproducible, and suitable for veterinary use.

This collaboration highlights something important: technology developed for human health can be re-applied, thoughtfully and responsibly, to conservation challenges that have never had access to modern molecular tools.

It’s rare for biotechnology, conservation biology, and veterinary medicine to intersect this directly, and it’s even rarer for that intersection to have such a clear and urgent purpose.

Dr. Christine Molter, Houston Zoo, Director of Animal Health: 

“It's such a relief to know that young elephants, like Kirby, will grow up protected from EEHV. The vaccine gives vulnerable, young elephants, like Kirby, a chance to grow up safe and protected from EEHV.  

Although the elephants don't know it, the EEHV vaccine is saving the lives of the youngest and most vulnerable members of their herd, like Kirby. The vaccine offers protection from a life-threatening EEHV illness and lets them grow up healthy and safe. 

The vaccine keeps elephant families together and spares them from devastating losses of their little ones, like Kirby, to this terrible disease.”    

Photo courtesy of the Cincinnati Zoo

A New Model for Conservation Biotechnology

The EEHV mRNA vaccine program is more than a response to a single disease. It’s an example of how translational science can be broadened to include species that rarely benefit from cutting-edge biomedical innovation.

If this approach succeeds, and early signs are promising, it could open the door to tackling other viral threats in endangered species, from primates to marine mammals.

The collaboration leveraged Baylor’s virology expertise, Helix’s mRNA+LNP development and manufacturing, and essential lipids supplied by Avanti Polar Lipids, a Croda company, to form a template for what conservation-focused biotechnology could look like in the coming decades.

Looking Ahead

At Helix Biotech, we’ve long believed that mRNA technology isn’t limited to pandemics or human therapeutics. It’s a flexible, modular platform, capable of being adapted to almost any antigen in almost any species when the right partners come together. Protecting elephant calves from EEHV is an ambitious goal, but it’s also a realistic one. And more importantly, it signals a broader shift in how we think about applying biotechnology, not just to extend human health, but to safeguard the animals and ecosystems we are losing far too quickly.

Photo courtesy of the Cincinnati Zoo