A highly effective malaria vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum should help prevent half a million deaths from malaria each year. New vaccine technologies and antigen discovery approaches now make accelerated design and development of a highly effective multi-antigen multi-stage subunit vaccine feasible. Leading malariologists, vaccine researchers and product developers will here collaborate in an exciting programme of antigen discovery science linked to rapid clinical development of new vaccine candidates. Our approach tackles the toughest problems in malaria vaccine design: choice of the best antigens, attaining high immunogenicity, avoiding polymorphic antigens and increasing the durability of vaccine immunogenicity and efficacy. We take advantage of several recent advances in vaccinology and adopt some very new technologies: sequencing malaria peptides eluted from the HLA molecules, parasites expressing multiple transgenes, multi-antigen virus-like particles constructed with new bonding technologies, delayed release microcapsules, and liver-targeted immunisation with vaccine vectors. We enhance our chances of success by using a multi-stage multi-antigen approach, by optimising the magnitude and durability of well-characterised immune responses to key antigens, and using stringent infectious challenges and functional assays as established criteria for progression at each stage. The consortium comprises many of the foremost researchers in this field in Europe with leading groups in the USA, Australia and Africa. We link to EDCTP programmes and harmonise our timeline to fit with the recent roadmaps for malaria vaccine development. We include a major pharma partner and several excellent European biotech companies helping enhance Europe’s leading position in the commercial development of vaccines. This ambitious and exciting programme should have a high chance of success in tackling the major global health problem posed by malaria.

Many HIV vaccine concepts and several efficacy trials have been conducted in the prophylactic and therapeutic fields with limited success. There is an urgent need to develop better vaccines and tools predictive of immunogenicity and of correlates of protection at early stage of vaccine development to mitigate the risks of failure. To address these complex and challenging scientific issues, the European HIV Vaccine Alliance (EHVA) program will develop a Multidisciplinary Vaccine Platform (MVP) in the fields of prophylactic and therapeutic HIV vaccines. The Specific Objectives of the MVP are to build up: 1.Discovery Platform with the goal of generating novel vaccine candidates inducing potent neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibody responses and T-cell responses, 2. Immune Profiling Platform with the goal of ranking novel and existing (benchmark) vaccine candidates on the basis of the immune profile, 3. Data Management/Integration/Down-Selection Platform, with the goal of providing statistical tools for the analysis and interpretation of complex data and algorithms for the efficient selection of vaccines, and 4. Clinical Trials Platform with the goal of accelerating the clinical development of novel vaccines and the early prediction of vaccine failure. EHVA project has developed a global and innovative strategy which includes: a) the multidisciplinary expertise involving immunologists, virologists, structural biology experts, statisticians and computational scientists and clinicians; b) the most innovative technologies to profile immune response and virus reservoir; c) the access to large cohort studies bringing together top European clinical scientists/centres in the fields of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines, d) the access to a panel of experimental HIV vaccines under clinical development that will be used as benchmark, and e) the liaison to a number of African leading scientists/programs which will foster the testing of future EHVA vaccines through EDCTP

The ISIDORe consortium, made of the capacities of European ESFRI infrastructures and coordinated networks, proposes to assemble the largest and most diverse research and service providing instrument to study infectious diseases in Europe, from structural biology to clinical trials. Giving scientists access to the whole extent of our state of the art facilities, cutting edge services, advanced equipment and expertise, in an integrated way and with a common goal, will enable or accelerate the generation of new knowledge and intervention tools to ultimately help control SARS CoV 2 in particular, and epidemic prone pathogens in general, while avoiding fragmentation and duplication among European initiatives. Such a global and interdisciplinary approach is meant to allow the implementation of user projects that are larger, more ambitious and more impactful than the EU supported transnational activities that the consortium is used to run. Our proposition is ambitious but achievable in a timely fashion due to the relevance and previous experience of the partners that we have gathered and that have complementary fields of expertise, which addresses the need for an interdisciplinary effort. Leveraging all these existing strengths to develop synergies will create an additional value and enhance Europe capacity for controlling emerging or re emerging and epidemic infectious diseases, starting with the COVID 19 pandemic. Such a global and coordinated approach is consistent with the recommendations of the One Health concept and necessary to make significant contributions to solving complex societal problems like epidemics and pandemics.

The TRANSVAC-DS project further builds on the outstanding success of EC-funded projects:TRANSVAC1 and TRANSVAC2 and proposes the establishment of a truly sustainable European vaccine infrastructure, which will build upon the lessons learned, activities and achievements of the TRANSVAC1/2 projects. Two infrastructure projects -TRANSVAC1 and TRANSVAC2- have been funded by the European Commission which -through the provision of state-of-the-art scientific-technical vaccine development services, technical training, and innovative vaccine research and development- have provided very significant support to European vaccine researchers and developers. Support has been, and is being provided to the development of human and veterinary prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. The twenty-five partners in the TRANSVAC-DS consortium that will contribute to the outcome of the project represent ten EU Member States and Associated Countries and include leading organisations from the European vaccine R&D field. The main output of TRANSVAC-DS will be a conceptual design report that will describe in detail the maturity of the concept and be the basis for the establishment of a permanent and sustainable vaccine infrastructure of direct relevance to and benefit for Europe and further afield. As part of the design report, a five-year business plan will be delivered together with an implementation plan that will guide the further establishment of a sustainable European vaccine infrastructure.