So far, within the ADITEC project, the research partners worked with two different antigens in their studies: H56 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis and H1 from influenza virus. After a rigorous selection process, the MOMP antigen from Chlamydia trachomatis has been selected as the 3^rd model antigen. Read more about the selection process

The ADITEC project has a special Ethical Review Board (ERB): an independent consultant body of the ethical issues of the project. This Board reports to the Steering Committee and EU about ethical issues within the ADITEC project, has recently been installed and consists of two members: Dr Cornelia D. Exner and Dr Zarifah Reed.

• Cornelia Exner is currently Officer for animal welfare and ethics at the Philipps-University Marburg, Germany. Before she joined this university, she was Executive director of the senate commission for animal research and animal welfare of the German Research Foundation). Including her prior positions, she has an extensive experience in animal behaviour and animal welfare.

• Zarifah Reed is a clinical development and public health specialist and paediatrician. She has been working in clinical research and product development since 2000 (among others with WHO and Regional Emerging Diseases Interventions) and has a thorough understanding of clinical development of vaccines.

Aditec partner Novartis Vaccines Institute for Global Health (NVGH) organizes, together with University of Siena and Novartis Vaccines Academy, the 3rd Master in Vaccinology and Pharmaceutical Clinical Development in Siena Italy.
The Master is an eighteen month training programme aimed to prepare students for a career in academia, public health and research & development in public and private vaccine institutes. It combines theoretical and practical training in immunology, infectious diseases, clinical development methodology and vaccinology, from research to licensure. The training is given by worldwide vaccine experts from academia, supranational organizations (e.g. WHO, EMA, Sabin Institute, Gates Foundation) and Industry.
Fellowships are supported by ADITEC and the deadline for submissions is February 5^th, 2013.
Read more about this master

ADITEC is sponsor of the world renowned vaccinology training programme ADVAC. Organized by ADITEC's partner University of Geneva, together with Insitut Mérieux, ADVAC is a training programme for decision-makers, including academia, industry, governmental and non-governmental agencies, in all fields related to vaccines and vaccination, vaccine trials, new vaccines, vaccination strategies and policies, vaccine-specific issues, ethical issues related to vaccine trials, financing of immunization policy, communication.
The new course will take place from 6-17 May 2013 in Annecy, France, see detailed programme. Fellowships are supported by ADITEC and the deadline for online applications is November 14^th 2012. Read more on the ADVAC website

Every newsletter one of ADITEC’s research partner will be highlighted. In this edition you will meet the Statens Serum Institute (SSI) in Copenhagen, Denmark.
SSI is a public enterprise under the Danish Ministry of Health. For more than 100 years SSI’s main task has been to secure the preparedness towards infectious diseases and congenital disorders. The tasks have been expanded, and today, SSI is an international research, production and service enterprise. Read more about SSI and its role in the ADITEC project

On August 22, 15 international leaders in the vaccine and human immunology arena, including representatives from French Atomic Energy Commission, University of Geneva, Emory University, University of Surrey, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Institute of Biomedical Aging Research, Institute for Research in Biomedicine and WHO among others, met in Lisbon to discuss some of the most challenging immunological questions which remain obstacles to vaccine development.
A wide range of topics were identified and discussed addressing such issues as the challenges of vaccinology in early life and in elderly, understanding immunological memory, evaluating safety and potency of vaccine adjuvants in early clinical studies, the best ways to study molecular signatures of human immunity and immunogenicity. Additionally the group discussed designing biomarkers which predict vaccine efficacy, what can we learn from systems biology analysis of human response, the main regulatory challenges in research and how best study the effects of human genetics, gender and co-infections on vaccine responses  among many other important topics. A summary of the meeting will be given at the ADITEC annual meeting in Nice, October 29-31 (only by invitation), where discussions will continue.

The ADITEC annual meeting will be held from 29-31 October in Nice, France. All partners of the project are invited for this meeting - that will be attended by around 100 participants - to present and discuss the results of the first year of research (by invitation only).

This is the list with recent publications related to the ADITEC project:

• Induction of protective immunity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis by delivery of ESX antigens into airway dendritic cells.
  Dong H, Stanek O, Rudilla Salvador F, Länger U, Morillon E, Ung C, Sebo P, Leclerc C, Majlessi L.
  Mucosal Immunol. 2012 Oct 3. doi: 10.1038/mi.2012.92.
• New pathways of protective and pathological host defense to mycobacteria.
  Ottenhoff TH.
  Trends Microbiol. 2012 Sep;20(9):419-28. Epub 2012 Jul 10.
• Genome-wide expression profiling identifies type 1 interferon response pathways in active tuberculosis.
  Ottenhoff TH, Dass RH, Yang N, Zhang MM, Wong HE, Sahiratmadja E, Khor CC, Alisjahbana B, van Crevel R, Marzuki S, Seielstad M, van de Vosse E, Hibberd ML.
  PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e45839. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0045839. Epub 2012 Sep 21.
• Simian immunodeficiency virus-Vpx for improving integrase defective lentiviral vector-based vaccines.
  Negri DR, Rossi A, Blasi M, Michelini Z, Leone P, Chiantore MV, Baroncelli S, Perretta G, Cimarelli A, Klotman ME, Cara A.
  Retrovirology. 2012 Aug 22;9(1):69.
• Polyethyleneimine is a potent mucosal adjuvant for viral glycoprotein antigens.
  Wegmann F, Gartlan KH, Harandi AM, Brinckmann SA, Coccia M, Hillson WR, Kok WL,  Cole S, Ho LP,  Lambe T,  Puthia M,  Svanborg C, Scherer EM,  Krashias G,  Williams A, Blattman JN, Greenberg PD, Flavell RA, Moghaddam AE, Sheppard NC, Sattentau QJ.
  Nat Biotechnol. 2012 Aug 26;: 22922673
• 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, et al. (2012) The Role of Innate APOBEC3G and Adaptive AID Immune Responses in HLA-HIV/SIV Immunized SHIV Infected Macaques.
  PLoS ONE 7(4): e34433. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034433
• A comparative study of stress-mediated immunological functions with the adjuvanticity of alum.
  Wang Y, Rahman D, Lehner T.
  J Biol Chem. 2012 May 18;287(21):17152-60. Epub 2012 Apr 3.
• Enabling biomarkers for tuberculosis control [State of the Art Series. New tools. Number 3 in the series]
  Maertzdorf, J.; Weiner III, J.; Kaufmann, S. H. E.
  The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, Volume 16, Number 9, 1 September 2012 , pp. 1140-1148(9)

Within and outside the ADITEC network several interesting meetings will take place in the coming months. For example:

• Therapeutics Vaccine Symposium (Tuberculosis), 25 October, Bethesda, Maryland USA
• Course: Human and Veterinary Vaccinology, 26-30 November, Oxford, UK
• Cold Spring Harbor Asia conference on vaccine design, 10-14 December, China
• Keystone symposium: Immunological Mechanisms of Vaccination, 13-17 December, Ottawa, Canada
• Third Global Forum on TB Vaccines, 25-27 March 2013, Cape Town, South Africa