An array of global health entities have joined forces to aid the process of developing epidemic responsive vaccines while also, demonstrating safety, efficacy and deployment preparedness.
University of Queensland officials said the institution has partnered with
the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza (WHO-CC), the Australian National University (ANU), Hong Kong University (HKU) and Q-Pharm Pty Ltd. to bring the ideal to fruition.
Vaccines to stop the world’s next epidemic could be developed in record time via a $14.7 million endeavor using technology developed at the University of Queensland. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has funded a research consortium to develop a rapid response pipeline to develop and test new vaccines in as little as 16 weeks.
“The technology has been designed as a platform approach to generate vaccines against a range of human and animal viruses,” Paul Young, a University of Queensland professor, said. “We’ve had some extremely promising results so far from trials targeting viruses such as influenza, Ebola, Nipah, and MERS coronavirus.”
The Australian government has been an early supporter of CEPI by providing a previous contribution of $2 million.
“By rapidly creating vaccines to these new threats, we’ll be able to quickly limit the spread of disease and diffuse potentially catastrophic situations,” said Dr. Daniel Watterson, who helped patent the molecular clamp technology providing stability to the viral proteins serving as the prime immune defense target. “Molecular clamp technology has the potential to address some of today’s most devastating diseases and to fundamentally change how we protect ourselves from common diseases.”