TRANSVAC & VAC2VAC
Dr. Hilde Depraetere from the European Vaccine Initiative, discusses two exciting projects, TRANSVAC & VAC2VAC.
TRANSVAC is an infrastructure and development project funded by Horizon 2020 that provides vaccine research and development to accelerate the development of human and veterinary vaccines. TRANSVAC offers a wide range of services, the majority of which can be accessed free-of-charge. Examples of their services include cross-platform screening and optimisation, adjuvants and delivery systems, immune correlates and animal models. Services that may be of interest to members of the International Veterinary Vaccinology Network include challenge studies to test the efficacy of novel vaccine candidates in cattle, sheep and pigs.
TRANSVAC currently have a call to support vaccine-related projects in the preclinical phase of development. The call was launched on 15th October 2017, and will remain open for the duration of the project (April 2022), or until all services have been exhausted. The first cut-off date for applications is on 15th December 2017. For more information about TRANSVAC, and to apply for their services, please visit their website: http://www.transvac.org/index.html.
VAC2VAC, launched in 2016, is an Innovative Medicine Initiative funded project. The overall objective of the “Vaccine batch to vaccine batch comparison by consistency testing” project (acronym: VAC2VAC) is to demonstrate proof-of-concept of the consistency approach for batch release testing of established vaccines. Sets of in vitro assays are to be used to ensure that each vaccine batch from an individual manufacturer is consistent with a batch already proven to be safe and efficacious in registration studies, thus ensuring consistent quality of the vaccine released to market.
The project’s first objective is to develop, optimise and evaluate non-animal methods to demonstrate that the key parameters of a vaccine batch remain consistent with those of previous batches, particularly with regards to safety and efficacy. Proof-of-concept for these methods will be sought for several types of human and/or veterinary vaccines currently on the market (toxoid, inactivated bacterial and inactivated viral vaccines), as well as for different adjuvants.
The project’s second objective is to work with regulators to define guidance for regulatory approval and routine use of the selected methods that have been developed, modified and/or optimised and pre-validated in the VAC2VAC project. VAC2VAC has a number of veterinary partners including Zoetis, MSD, Merial and Boehringer Ingelheim. For more information about VAC2VAC, please visit their website http://www.vac2vac.eu/.