European Vaccines Hub for Pandemic Readiness

To ensure Europe's vaccine readiness and responsiveness for pandemics, this project will create the European Vaccine Hub (EVH) by aligning existing nationally funded vaccine R&D investments into a collaborative network for end-to-end vaccine delivery. The project assembles a consortium including leading EU organisations directly involved in vaccine development and in charge of pandemic preparedness in their own countries: Biotecnopolo, Institut Pasteur, Vaccinopolis (UAntwerpen), DZIF, and ZEPAI. EVH will be built by experts with excellent track records in vaccine discovery, development, trial conduct, EMA/FDA licensure, and manufacturing. The hub will have an agile decentralised structure and the leadership to organise collaborative vaccine research in Europe and the intention to be sustainable beyond the initial HERA/HADEA funding. Industry will be involved to develop PPPs capable of developing vaccines within four months from a pathogen's genomic sequence. EVH will use a prototype vaccine approach involving platform technologies (such as RNA, viral vectors, recombinant proteins) and monoclonal antibodies, preclinical studies, Phase I/II and CHIM trials. The hub will ensure accessibility to GMP production, clinical trial sites (each representing a country network), a network of immunomonitoring labs, tech transfers and upscaling of production through existing warm base contracts with industry. H5N1 and universal influenza targets will be used to set up and stress test the hub across the entire pipeline, although activities will also be undertaken for SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox, and flaviviruses according to their EU threat potential. By providing a reservoir of EU vaccine expertise and candidate vaccines, EVH will develop and oversee the implementation of a European pandemic-vaccine readiness plan bringing together the best resources available in the public and private sectors thus enabling EU excellence to be directed at the protection of its citizens and economy.