Pfizer Joins the Human Vaccines Project

Pfizer announced on March 22, 2016 it is joining the Human Vaccines Project, a public-private consortium focused on cross-sector collaboration to identify human immune responses associated with optimal vaccine protection.

The Human Vaccines Project is a non-profit public-private partnership with the mission to accelerate the development of vaccines and immunotherapies against major infectious diseases and cancers by decoding the human immune system. The project brings together academic research centers, industrial partners, nonprofit organizations, and governments to address the primary scientific barriers to developing new vaccines and immunotherapies.

The project was originally started by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and has now grown to include multiple partners. Pfizer joins a list of partners and financial supporters including: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Regeneron, GlaxoSmithKline, Aeras, MedImmune, Sanofi Pasteur, Crucell/Janssen, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The project has also been endorsed by 35 of the world’s leading vaccine scientists.

According to Pfizer, one of the key challenges in vaccine development is the lack of understanding of the rules of effective immunity and how to generate such responses through vaccines and immunotherapies in key global populations. Applying the latest biomedical technologies, the consortium will have the potential to identify the fundamentals of immunological protection, which could lead to the development of new and improved vaccines, immunotherapies, and diagnostics.

“The human immune system holds the key to preventing and controlling a broad spectrum of infectious diseases, cancers, autoimmune diseases and allergies,” said Wayne C. Koff, PhD, founder of the Human Vaccines Project. “By bringing together leading vaccine researchers, institutions, and biopharmaceutical companies, and harnessing recent technological advances in molecular and cellular biology and bioinformatics, the project may potentially enable accelerated development of vaccines and immunotherapies for some of the most devastating diseases of our time.”

Source: Pfizer