Nom i cognoms / Name and surname
Prof Dr Cornelis Hokke, Dr Angela van Diepen, Dr Michel Bengtson, Dr Rajagopal Murugan, Dr Ir Floor de Weijer, Prof Dr Meta Roestenberg, Dr Emma Houlder, Koen Stam, Dr Carlota Dobaño, Dr Gemma Moncunill, Dr Rebeca Santano, Silvia Ruiz, Dr Alberto Grandi, Dr Guido Grandi, Dr Selidji Todagbe Agnandji, Dr Kossiwa Kokou, Dr Maja Pučić Baković, Dr Siniša Habazin, Filip Kliček, Dr Jelena Šimunović, Dr Jerko Štambuk, Alessia Perrone, Caroline Stöhr, Dr Vera Schneider, Zala Turšič, Prof Dr Afzal Siddiqui, Prof Dr Mumtaz Yaseen, Prof Alison Elliott, Dr Moses Egesa, Dr Emmanuella Driciru, Dr Arjen Schots, Dr Ir Ruud Wilbers, Geartsje Bakker, Prof Karl Francis Hoffmann, Dr Alex Loukas, Dr Paul Giacomin, Prof Dr Jennifer Keiser, Dr Maude Dagenais
Afiliació / Affiliation
ISGlobal
Programa de finançament europeu en que s’enmarca aquest projecte? / European funding programme in which this project is being carried out?
Other (EU support, FP7, H2020, etc.)
Títol del projecte / Project title
Innovations for vaccines against helminth infections
Número del projecte / Project number
101080784
Breu explicació del projecte / Brief explanation of your project
Infections with parasitic worms (helminths) caused by soil-transmitted helminths and schistosomes continue to cause a massive global health burden. More than a billion people suffer from the debilitating effects of infections with such parasites, including schistosomes or hookworms.
Despite mass drug treatment programs large numbers of people living in endemic areas remain infected or get rapidly reinfected because they have not developed resistance to new infections.
Vaccines could offer a solution and enable control and elimination of helminth infections. There are several reasons why effective helminth vaccines do not yet exist:
-Vaccine target discovery approaches are not well-developed.
-Protective immune mechanisms effective against these complex parasitic organisms are only partially clarified at best.
-Production platforms tailored to specific helminth vaccine requirements are not available.
-A pipeline for selecting and rapidly progressing pre-clinical and clinical vaccine candidates is generally lacking.
Moreover, controlled human infection models that have been shown to accelerate the clinical development of vaccines against other types of infectious diseases are only now being developed and optimized for some human helminth infections. These models have not yet been widely implemented in helminth vaccine development programs to date.
The WORMVACS2.0 consortium aims to establish an effective pipeline to support helminth vaccine development through the development and application of an innovative programme based on application of controlled human infection models, novel platforms for helminth vaccine/vaccine antigen production, experimental pre-clinical models, and improved target discovery methodology applying state-of-the-art immunological profiling to identify correlates and signatures of protection. The proposed project will have an immediate application in vaccine development for schistosome and hookworm infections, arguably the most important of the helminth infections in terms of detrimental effects on global human health.
The objectives of WORMVACS2.0 are to:
– Fill critical gaps in our knowledge of human immunology, including protective immunity, through the use of biospecimens and data derived from controlled human infection models with Necator americanus (intestinal nematode, hookworm) and Schistosoma mansoni (trematode, blood fluke), that were or will be carried out in volunteers from both non-endemic as well as endemic areas.
– Establish a pipeline of informed vaccine discovery and development by deriving novel candidate antigens from human immunological and molecular parasitological data and from pre-clinical vaccination models, and the implementation of innovative production platforms that allow rapid production, engineering, and adaptation of diverse helminth vaccine antigens for pre-clinical and clinical testing.
– Optimise the efficacy of existing but yet suboptimal early clinical/late pre-clinical vaccine candidates for S. mansoni and N. americanus infections.
Enllaç a la pàgina web del projecte / Link to your project website
