Development of Broadly Protective Filovirus Vaccines

The overall objective of the proposed broadly protective Filovirus vaccine project is to leverage co-funding from the European Commission to support the development of vaccines that will protect against a range of Filoviruses. Within this viral family, Ebolaviruses and Marburgvirus are endemic to West and Central Africa and cause frequent unpredictable outbreaks of varying size and duration. These outbreaks have significant health and societal impacts on populations in the endemic regions. In order to better prepare for future outbreaks of Zaire ebolavirus and other Filoviruses, it is necessary to develop tools to preventively vaccinate at-risk populations, such as health-care workers, in endemic regions. The impact of such preventive vaccinations would be greatest if the vaccines protected against a broad range of Filoviruses that emerge in those regions. This project therefore aims to support the development of broadly protective Filovirus vaccines for preventive use. This will be achieved through two focussed areas of work, the first being the development of multivalent vaccines composed of single valencies covering different Filoviruses, and secondly the development of a vaccine library comprised of all known Filoviruses. The output of the work under this project will be multivalent vaccines with phase II clinical data to support a pathway to licensure, and individual exemplar candidates from a vaccine library with phase I clinical data. This co-funded grant application seeks to leverage €35m from Horizon Europe, which will be supplemented with €15m from CEPI making a total pool of €50m. Awards to support the project aims will be administered and managed by the CEPI secretariat, and the total project duration will be 66 months. This project builds on the existing partnership between the CEPI and the European Union which seeks to accelerate vaccine development for priority pathogens causing epidemic and pandemic threats collaboratively and effectively.