Merck and Wellcome Trust to put £90M into not-for -profit vaccines venture

Joint venture

The Wellcome Trust is teaming up with the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co to set up a not-for-profit joint venture to develop vaccines against diseases that are prevalent in developing countries.

The two say the joint venture is the first time a research charity and a pharmaceutical company have partnered to form a separate entity with equally shared funding and decision-making rights.

Between them Merck and the Wellcome Trust will invest £90 million over the next seven years and will support a staff of approximately 60 researchers and developers. The venture, to be based in India, will develop partnerships with a broad range of experts in vaccine research, policy and manufacturing.

The aim is to create a sustainable R&D organisation that operates like a business, but with a not-for-profit operating model. As well as developing new vaccines in areas of unmet need, the joint venture, to be known as the Hilleman Laboratories, will also work on optimising existing vaccines.

“Linking the ingenuity of academic research with the know-how of industry is vital if we are to produce a new generation of vaccines to reduce the burden of infectious diseases in low-income countries,” Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust. “The Hilleman Laboratories partnership brings together the requisite skills in a powerful way.”

There is a critical need to develop new ways for scientific innovation to be translated effectively into new vaccines that can save lives and protect the health of people living in low-income countries, said Richard Clark, CEO of Merck. “We believe that success in bringing forward these new vaccines can be best achieved through productive partnerships.

The Hilleman Laboratories is structured to fill the vaccines development gap. Typically, scientists from academia and government identify vaccine candidates that are potentially useful to developing countries, but then face significant technical challenges in designing suitable formulations, production processes and clinical programmes.

The Laboratories will work to advance projects to proof of concept by providing expertise in product development and optimisation that is typically available only within large vaccine companies. The joint venture will also work with vaccine manufacturers to ensure production can be scaled and that the vaccines are affordable.

The initial portfolio of projects will be selected after consultation with the international community and careful technical assessment, but examples of the kind of programmes being considered include developing vaccines that do not require refrigeration, and a vaccine against group A streptococci, which cause more than 500,000 deaths a year worldwide.

The Hilleman Laboratories will operate with a combination of core funding from the founders, third-party grants and other revenue streams. Over time, it is envisaged its income will come from commercialising its vaccines in developed countries.

The new venture is named in honour of the vaccine scientist Maurice Hilleman who is credited with the development of more than 30 vaccines, including measles, mumps and hepatitis B, during a career that included nearly 30 years at Merck.