Welcome to our first newsletter!
Dear partner,
I’m happy to send you the first electronic newsletter of ADITEC, the EU/FP7 funded project about Advanced Immunization Technologies. With this letter we want to update our partners, allies and everyone else who’s interested in our activities and the progress we make. You receive this newsletter because your e-mail address is known to our consortium, and because we think you might be interested in our activities.
Please don’t hesitate to forward this mail to anyone who could also be interested in reading it. If they want to receive their own e-newsletter in the future, they can subscribe on our website via the link below. If you’re not interested in receiving our newsletter anymore, you can unsubcribe via the unsubscribe button at the end of this newsletter.
I hope you will enjoy reading our news!
Dr Rino Rappuoli,
Project coordinator
ADITEC project information
ADITEC is a collaborative research programme that aims to accelerate the development of novel and powerful immunisation technologies for the next generation of human vaccines. Scientists from 13 countries and 42 research partners collaborate in the ADITEC project.
Aditec comprises some of the most competitive European research groups from universities, research institutions and biotech companies together with top US groups on systems biology and adjuvants. Different aspects of vaccination, from basic research, new technologies to clinical trials and public health, are covered.
Through this effort, ADITEC offers the opportunity to create synergies and promote cross fertilization among divergent research disciplines. Interdisciplinary collaborations have the potential to fill knowledge gaps that are inhibiting the discovery of new effective and safe immunization technologies. Aditec started in October 2011, is a 5-year project and is funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme. The list of research partners and more information can be found on our website
ADITEC: joining forces for next-generation Vaccines
Summary of Commentary in Science Translational Medicine (Sci. Transl. Med. 4, 128cm4 (2012)
Scientists sit poised at a singular moment in the history of vaccine research. Genomics and systems biology have fuelled advances in our understanding of human immunology. Together with adjuvant development and structure-based design of immunogens, these next-generation technologies are transforming the field of vaccinology and shaping the future of medicine. However, the sophisticated science behind the development of modern vaccines and the resulting knotty ethical issues have become so complex that scientists and policy-makers need a new model for vaccine research. The European Commission–sponsored Advanced Immunization Technologies project — ADITEC — brings together some of the leading laboratories in the field to tackle the problems that no lab can tackle in isolation.
ADITEC flyer
ADITEC developed a flyer with a short overview of the project. This twopager, made for all kind of target groups, can be used widely by everyone who is interested.
Research news: Vaccine Adjuvants
News from our research partner Ali Harandi, University of Gothenburg, leader of ADITEC workpackage 1: Vaccine Adjuvants
As vaccines under development increasingly originate from recombinant technologies and that our comprehension of the interplay between innate and adaptive immune system grows, the need for additional safe and potent vaccine adjuvants is expected to rise considerably. However, the existing data on adjuvant potency and safety have mostly been generated using a wide variety of antigens, immunization schemes and individual approaches, which makes it difficult or even impossible to compare the potency of different adjuvants.
ADITEC is in an exceptional position of having a remarkable toolbox of several validated novel adjuvants and non-living delivery systems with different mechanisms of action, some of which have reached human trials with documented safety profile or in the advanced pre-clinical stage. ADITEC work package Adjuvant has geared up to carry out comparative analysis of ADITEC adjuvants as well as development of next generation adjuvants with improved potency and safety.
External Advisory Board
ADITEC has an External Advisory Board (EAB): an independent consulting body created to provide general strategic and scientific advice on the conduct of the ADITEC project as well as to give specific recommendations to the project Steering Committee before critical decisions are made.The External Advisory Board consists of the following members:
Dr Gary J. Nabel, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bethesda, Maryland (USA)
Dr Vivienne Parry, Representative patients associations, London (UK)
Prof. David M Salisbury, Immunisation Department of Health (DH) London (UK)
Dr Pier Luigi Lopalco European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Stockholm, Sweden
Dr Marco Cavaleri (observer), European Medicines Agency (EMA)
Dr Kajo Kallen, CureVac GmbH (Germany)
Dr Alan Shaw, VaxInnate Corporation, Cranbury, New Jersey (USA)
Dr George Siber, Genocea, Cambridge, MA (USA)
Recent publications
- ADITEC: Joining Forces for Next-Generation Vaccines
R. Rappuoli, D. Medaglini,
Sci. Transl. Med. 4, 128cm4 (2012). - Influenza: Options to Improve Pandemic Preparation
Rino Rappuoli, Philip R. Dormitzer
Science 22 June 2012: Vol. 336 no. 6088 pp. 1531-1533 - Pandemic H1N1 influenza vaccine induces a recall response in humans that favors broadly cross-reactive memory B cells,
Gui-Mei Li, Christopher Chiua, Jens Wrammert, Megan McCauslanda, Sarah F. Andrews, Nai-Ying Zheng, Jane-Hwei Lee, Min Huang, Xinyan Qu, Srilatha Edupuganti, Mark Mulligan, Suman R. Das, Jonathan W. Yewdell, Aneesh K. Mehta, Patrick C. Wilson, and Rafi Ahmeda,
PNAS May 21, 2012 - Vaccines against Tuberculosis: Where Are We and Where Do We Need to Go? Ottenhoff THM, Kaufmann SHE (2012) PLoS Pathog 8(5): e1002607. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1002607
- Ten challenges for TB Biomarkers (invited commentary)
THM Ottenhoff, JJ Ellner and SHE Kaufmann.
Tuberculosis (Edinb). 2012 Mar; 92 Suppl 1:S17-20. - The Role of Innate APOBEC3G and Adaptive AID Immune Responses in HLA-HIV/SIV Immunized SHIV Infected Macaques.
Wang Y, Whittall T, Rahman D, Bunnik EM, Vaughan R, Schøller J, Bergmeier LA, Montefiori D, Singh M, Schuitemaker H and Lehner T.
2012. PlosOne. 7(4): e34433. - A structurally informed autotransporter platform for efficient heterologous protein secretion and display
Wouter SP Jong, Zora Soprova, Karin de Punder, Corinne M ten Hagen-Jongman, Samuel Wagner, David Wickström, Jan-Willem de Gier, Peter Andersen, Nicole N van der Wel, Joen Luirink
Microbial Cell Factories 2012, 11:85 (18 June 2012)
Interesting meetings
- Systems Biology and T cell activation and differentiation, 13-08-12 – 14-08-12, Turku, Finland
- Cell Symposia Human Immunity, 19-08-12 – 21-08-12, Lisbon, Portugal
- 2nd International Conference on Vaccines and Vaccination, 20-08-12 – 22-08-12, Hilton Chicago/Northbrook, USA
- Tuberculosis 2012: Biology, Pathogenesis, Intervention Strategies, 11-09-12 – 15-09-12, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
- 6th Vaccine & ISV Annual Global Congress – 14-10-2012 – 14-10-2012, Shanghai, China
- ADITEC annual meeting, 29-31 October, Nice, France. All partners of the project are invited for this meeting to present and discuss the results of the first year of research.
Win € 2 million for a leap forward in vaccine technology
The race to overcome weaknesses in the cold-chain for vaccine transport and storage is on! Many people in tropical and developing countries cannot benefit from life-saving vaccines because these vaccines are damaged during transport and storage. Many vaccines need to be kept at a cool and stable temperature to remain effective and this is difficult to ensure in these regions.
The European Commission is offering a EUR 2 million prize for innovations which can solve this global health problem. See more details on the website of the European Commission