EU AIDS Vaccine scheme launched
A new €23m EU initiative that seeks to accelerate the search for an effective HIV vaccine has been launched.
Receiving funding from Horizon 2020, the European AIDS Vaccine Initiative (EAVI2020) brings together leading HIV researchers from public organisations and biotech companies from across Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA who are focusing efforts to develop protective and therapeutic HIV vaccines.
Although researchers have been working on developing a vaccine for 30 years, recent advances are helping to speed up their quest. Scientists have isolated antibodies that are able to block HIV infection in preclinical models, and there have been new developments in using synthetic biology to design better vaccines.
The EAVI2020 consortium, which is led by Imperial College London, UK, unites scientists from 22 institutions, pooling their knowledge and expertise to develop novel candidate vaccines that can be taken through to human trials within five years.
Professor Robin Shattock, co-ordinator of EAVI2020, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, said: “It is impossible for one group or institution to create an HIV vaccine on its own. This new project should enable us to move much more quickly.
“It brings together a multidisciplinary team of molecular biologists, immunologists, virologists, biotechnologists and clinicians, providing the breadth of expertise needed to take the latest discoveries in the lab and rapidly advance them through preclinical testing and manufacture, into early human trials.”
Adding her thoughts, Dr Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, Director of the Health Directorate, DG Research and Innovation in the European Commission, commented: “Despite major global investments in the field and the promising progress, several scientific obstacles have to be overcome to develop novel promising HIV vaccine candidates.
“It is with this in mind that the European Commission is providing an almost €23m grant to the EAVI2020 consortium from which we have high hopes for success. This will allow European scientists to work together and in collaboration with researchers from outside Europe to successfully develop predictive tools and better vaccine candidates to be tested at an early stage of the process.”
EAVI2020 is funded with an EU grant under the Horizon 2020 health objective.
