For details please go to www.transvac.org

TRANSVAC is a four year project with thirteen consortium members, coordinated by EVI, with a budget of €9 900 000. The official starting date was 1 October 2009.

Europe has significant vaccine research and development expertise – the home of 60% of global vaccine research and development. Cooperation between research institutions in Europe is critical to maintain and further develop expertise and competencies as well as to ensure the future of vaccine manufacture in Europe. Currently there is little cooperation between R&D groups, assay developers and vaccine producers. TRANSVAC aims to change this by creating a network of all stakeholders involved in vaccine research and development.

Improving vaccine development

The European Commission has long been instrumental in the integration and networking of groups developing new vaccines. However, gaps remain between scientists, the groups developing tests for characterising new vaccines, and the groups who can manufacture vaccines.  This gap is often referred to as a “translational gap” as translating good ideas into effective vaccines can be very difficult to achieve. Moreover, there is very limited collaboration between groups working on vaccines for different diseases, with this lack of sharing resulting in the loss of information, knowledge, and expertise. To connect these different groups and accelerate the development and testing of promising new vaccines in Europe, it is vital to connect these groups and further strengthen the vaccine research infrastructure in Europe and ensure the highest quality research possible in this field.

To address these challenges the TRANSVAC project will establish a collaborative vaccine development infrastructure based on shared visions and goals that will rapidly develop effective and safe vaccines. This will be achieved by identifying new vaccines that are being developed in academic research institutions (e.g. universities) and advancing these new vaccines quickly and effectively through the complex steps required to get new vaccines to a stage where they are effective and safe enough to test in human clinical trials. TRANSVAC will provide the funding, expertise and facilities to achieve this and will be accessible to any new parties with relevant expertise and to any groups researching new vaccines.

Building on previous success

The European Malaria Vaccine Initiative (EMVI) and the Tuberculosis Vaccine Integrated (TBVI) project have each demonstrated significant success in creating the expertise and networks to enable the advancement of European vaccine development within their own respective fields of malaria and tuberculosis. In order to further build on the success generated by EMVI and TBVI, the TRANSVAC vaccine development infrastructure is being established, consisting of 13 partner institutions across five European countries. Each institution has committed to sharing facilities, resources and expertise on vaccine development that can be applied to each stage of the vaccine development process. The project is funded by the European Commission and the partner institutions for four years. This investment will contribute to protecting European citizens from infectious diseases and will also create a sustainable infrastructure enhancing the economic health of partner institutions and countries.

TRANSVAC will be the European driving force for vaccine development. This will be achieved through the structured exchanges of data and information, transnational access to existing vaccine infrastructures and the joint execution of research projects. Together these initiatives will bring TRANSVAC and Europe into a new era in the innovative, harmonised and rapid development of accessible, safe and efficacious vaccines for Europe and the rest of the world.