This project is a perfect example of the need for public-private collaboration, said Michel Goldman, IMI Executive Director. “Vaccine development and evaluation involves diverse stakeholders, including vaccine manufacturers, academic laboratories, and public health authorities.” The flu project will bring these diverse groups together to improve the development of vaccines.
IMI is encouraging small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), academic centres (both clinical and experimental), centres from national and supranational public health bodies, and regulatory authorities to form consortia and apply for this call, the ‘Immunological assay standardisation and development for use in assessments of correlates of protection for influenza vaccines’. The deadline for submitting expressions of interest is 28 January.
Testing flu vaccines
Currently, researchers measure things like the levels of certain antibodies in the blood. However, these tests are not standardised and there are questions as to how well these tests actually reflect the extent to which a vaccine offers a protection against infection, and there are on-going discussions as to which test is most suitable for different situations.
The long-term goal of this new IMI project is to improve and standardise the existing immunological tests and develop new ones to improve the evaluation of flu vaccines. The project also looks to produce standardised serological and immunological tests that can be used in studies aimed at developing clinically relevant surrogate markers of protection for influenza vaccines.
Need for public-private collaboration
In a presentation on the project, Giuseppe Del Giudice, Global Head of Translational Medicine at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, said this research represents an ideal ground for public-private collaboration. It will allow for common agreement to be reached on how to perform and measures many tests used by all groups, private and public, when testing vaccines.
Academic researchers and SMEs participating in the project will be able to gain access to information, material, and protocols from influenza vaccine manufacturers, said the pre-call presentation.
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