In November 2013 the collaborative infrastructure programme ‘European Research Infrastructures for Poverty Related Diseases’ (EURIPRED) will start in order to reinforce the knowledge infrastructure across diseases. The ultimate aim is to speed the development of new tools (vaccines, drugs, microbicides) to combat Tuberculosis, HIV, Malaria, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. EURIPRED is co-funded with €8.5M by the European Commission. Scientists from 17 research partners in 10 countries, including TBVI, will collaborate in this new programme.
HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria alone account for 3.4 million deaths worldwide every year. Despite substantial efforts made in recent years, these poverty related diseases are still spreading. Among the reasons are the absence of preventing vaccines for all diseases, the sometimes tough and burdensome treatment courses and the underdiagnoses. Therefore new tools are urgently required to combat these diseases.
Several organisations in Europe and beyond, are working on the development of these new tools. For HIV, TB and Malaria there are well developed infrastructures for the development of the specific tools each, where research organisations share knowledge to accelerate development. However, it is no common use that they benefit from other diseases’ experiences, because there is no single infrastructure to coordinate the development of all these new tools from discovery to clinical trials. EURIPRED aims to fill this gap, by integrating international resources and networks in this field, including for Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C which both could very well benefit from the experiences in other diseases.
“By creating partnerships between European scientists and international research teams from disease endemic countries, we expect to speed up the development of new vaccines, drugs and microbicides,” says Dr Jelle Thole of TBVI. “Besides that, by minimising fragmentation and duplication of research efforts and pooling fragmented resources EURIPRED can improve research efficiency and effectiveness.”
EURIPRED comprises a team of leading European scientists, institutes and networks in the field of poverty related diseases. The project is reinforced by key partners in the endemic countries China, Russia and Kenya. Besides knowledge exchange, concrete objectives are exchange, selection, development, production and validation of reference reagents, assays and standards and training.
TBVI inserts in this project their extensive knowledge and expertise in the field of TB vaccine development. TBVI coordinates a network of over 50 research institutes and universities which all work on the development of new TB vaccines. The knowledge developed within this network, and the way of collaboration, can be of huge importance for other field within EURIPRED. Furthermore TBVI will be responsible for knowledge exchange via public communication tools. TBVI will also contribute to the development of new, innovative funding mechanism in order to develop new tools in the battle against TB.
Details of EURIPRED project:
Start date: 01/11/2013
End date: 31/10/2017
Project cost: €10,959,478.67
EU contribution: €8,484,922.69
Coordinator: Meghna Ramaswamy, National Institute of Biological Standards and Control, Tel: +44 (0) 1707 641586, email: [email protected]
Deputy Coordinator: Mei Mei Ho, National Institute of Biological Standards and Control, Tel: +44 (0) 1707 641473, email: [email protected]
Project manager: Sarah Gilbert, National Institute of Biological Standards and Control, Tel: +44 (0) 1707 641367, email: [email protected]
Participants:
Source: TBVI