EHVA’s programme aims to achieve the following impact:
EHVA will contribute to achieving safe and effective prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines to combat HIV/AIDS. Despite enormous progress in the prevention and treatment for HIV and AIDS, the global response cannot keep pace: 36.9 million people are living with HIV worldwide with around 6,000 new HIV infections each day. Whilst the vast majority of new infections occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, the past year has also seen over 142,000 new infections in the European region. HIV vaccines will be essential to cut new HIV infections, ensure a sustainable response to HIV/AIDS, save the lives of millions of people and ultimately help achieve an end to the epidemic.
EHVA’s vaccine trial infrastructure will provide resources from discovery to early stage clinical research in order to identify the best vaccine candidates and regimens for clinical advancement. The resulting database of pre-clinical and clinical endpoints will provide an indispensable resource for the HIV vaccine research community. The main anticipated impacts are the following:
- Reduction in the cost through improved methods for selecting best-in-class vaccine candidates in early stage research, increasing the number of candidates that can be evaluated with limited resources, thus increasing the chance of achieving effective vaccines
- Ensuring capacity and resources for the further clinical development of promising vaccine candidates in regions where vaccines are most needed, based on the relationship with the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trial Partnership (EDCTP)
- Improving innovation capacity and the integration of new knowledge, notably through close collaboration with the industrial partners for product development
