European Commission funds €23m project to develop HIV vaccine
pharmafile | November 2, 2015 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | BioNTech, European Commission, HIV, R&D, horizon 2020
The European Commission has kicked-off a new €23 million research program to bring together researchers to work on a potential HIV vaccine.
Financed by the European Commission and the Horizon 2020 program for research and innovation, the European AIDS Vaccine Initiative (EAVI2020), will bring together leading HIV researchers from public organisations and biotech companies from across Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA to develop novel candidate vaccines that can be taken through to human trials within five years.
BioNTech, the German-based biotech company, is one of members of the EAVI2020 consortium. They 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.
Professor Ugur Sahin, founder and chief executive of BioNTech says: “We are delighted to be part of this world-class consortium and to collaborate with leading experts from around the globe in the field of anti-infective vaccine development. This project has great potential and will allow us to develop a completely new class of highly-potent, self-amplifying RNA vaccines for the effective prevention and treatment of HIV infection.”
According to the World Health Organisation, over two million people are newly infected every year, with an estimated $22 billion spent yearly on treatment and care. Although researchers have been working on developing a vaccine for 30 years, scientists have isolated antibodies that are able to block HIV infection in preclinical models, along with new developments in using synthetic biology to design better vaccines.
Dr Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, director of the health directorate at the EC’s directorate general for research and innovation, says: “In its dual role of policy maker and research funder, the European Commission has played an essential part for over thirty 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 €23 million 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.”
Yasmita Kumar
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