HIV scientists launch €23m project to develop HIV vaccine
They will pool their knowledge to develop novel candidate vaccines that can be taken through to human trials within five years
The European AIDS Vaccine Initiative (EAVI2020), financed by the European Commission, is bringing together leading HIV researchers from public organisations and biotech companies from Europe, Australia, Canada and the US in a focused effort to develop HIV vaccines.
Figures from the World Health Organisation, state that around 35 million people had HIV at the end of 2013. More than two million people are newly infected every year, and it is estimated that around US$22bn is spent annually on HIV treatment and care.
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.
German biotechnology company BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals is a key member of the EAVI2020 consortium, which 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.
EAVI2020 is funded with an EU-grant under the Horizon 2020 programme for research and innovation.
Professor Robin Shattock, Coordinator of EAVI2020, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, said: 'Creating an effective vaccine against HIV represents one of the greatest biological challenges of a generation. This project creates a unique opportunity for us to build on the enormous scientific progress gleaned over the last few years, providing an unprecedented insight into the nature of protective antibodies and anti-viral cellular response that will be needed for an effective vaccine.
Creating an effective vaccine against HIV represents one of the greatest biological challenges of a generation
'We now understand much more about how humans make protective immune responses and how to structure vaccine candidates. We have a level of understanding at a molecular level that was not previously available. But 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.'
BioNTech will provide novel, highly immunogenic, prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine candidates for preclinical and clinical testing in HIV. These vaccines are based on BioNTech´s self-amplifying RNA vaccine vector technology which is suitable for expressing high levels of HIV antigens in vaccine recipients. This technology promises to be superior to any existing mRNA approaches in infectious disease and is the result of more than 20 years of experience in developing and optimising mRNA-based prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines.
Dr Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, Director of the Health Directorate at the Directorate General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission, said: 'In its dual role of policymaker and research funder, the European Commission has played an essential part for over 30 years in supporting HIV vaccine research. 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.'
