IVVN Landscape Workshop: Shaping the Future of Veterinary Vaccinology

18 Sep 2025

On the 3rd and 4th of September 2025, the International Veterinary Vaccinology Network (IVVN) convened researchers, animal health companies, funders, policymakers, international agencies and farming communities for a two-day facilitated workshop focused on the current and future needs of veterinary vaccinology research and innovation worldwide.

Over the two days, participants took part in collaborative discussions on key challenges identified by the community through surveys conducted ahead of the workshop. These conversations led to the development of action plans to address some of these challenges.

Initial Discussion of the Challenges

The top five challenges identified through sector-specific surveys were:

  1. How to achieve greater alignment, understanding and interaction between academic and industrial activities.

  2. Securing the long-term future of veterinary vaccinology research.
  3. How to prioritise and support R&D across diverse disease targets.
  4. How the veterinary vaccinology community should contribute to the major global challenges: AMR, pandemic preparedness, food security and climate change.
  5. How the community should address vaccines for low- and middle-income countries and other targets that hold less commercial appeal for global industry partners.

Action Plan to Address the Challenges

Through iterative discussions and follow-up questions arising from the initial challenges, participants created action plans around four guiding points:

  • What tangible actions can be taken?

  • What difference do we want to make?
  • What are the first steps?
  • Who needs to be involved, and how do we bring the right people to the table?

From these discussions, participants identified six aspirations:

  • Establish a community-based approach to address key biological constraints in vaccine development.
  • Seek resources to create an animal health equivalent of CEPI.
  • Identify actions and resources to secure long-term funding for veterinary vaccinology.
  • Develop coherent advocacy plans for veterinary vaccinology with stakeholders.
  • Strengthen mutual understanding between stakeholders in the field.
  • Implement mechanisms for effective knowledge sharing and communication on veterinary vaccines, including strategies to address misinformation.

Looking Forward

The IVVN team is now consolidating the action plan discussions to define tangible outputs, the steps required, and the stakeholders to be involved.

  • IVVN will directly facilitate certain actions, for example those relating to knowledge exchange. For actions better suited to other stakeholders, IVVN will provide support and facilitation where needed. Volunteers from the workshop will be sought to lead specific actions.
  • Regular communication will be maintained with attendees through monthly updates, sharing progress on consolidating discussions and outlining next steps for each action plan.
  • A full report of the proceedings will be written and published.