Vaccines for global epidemics – clinical

Key Features

Organisations can apply for a share of £35 million to develop new vaccines against infectious diseases

Programme:     SBRI

Award:     Up to £3m

Opens: 23rd Jan 2017

Closes: 19th Apr 2017

! This scheme is now closed

This competition aims to support the clinical development of candidate vaccines against 12 diseases. The UK Vaccine Network has identified these diseases as a priority because they have the potential to cause epidemics in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

  • chikungunya
  • Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever
  • ebola
  • hantavirus
  • lassa fever
  • Marburg virus
  • Middle East respiratory syndrome
  • nipah
  • plague
  • Q fever
  • Rift Valley fever
  • zika

The competition will support the clinical development of candidate vaccines up to and including phase IIb trials. The funders will also consider co-funding phase III trials, either with industry or other philanthropic or government funders.

The competition funders are particularly keen to support:

  • high-risk proof of concept. This involves applying emerging or existing vaccine platform technologies from other areas of vaccinology to the 12 priority diseases
  • testing vaccine platform technologies in humans to improve the efficacy of existing strategies
  • testing proven animal vaccines based on strong data to support their use in humans
  • developing vaccines for the 12 priority diseases for use with relevant animal populations to reduce the risk of transmission to humans
  • vaccine delivery technologies that would allow for easier, simpler and more efficient administration
  • diagnostics that can be used to demonstrate safety and/or correlates of immunity
  • ambitious multivalent candidate vaccines. These could protect against multiple strains of a single pathogen, or against multiple pathogens

Funding and project details

The competition is a single stage. It covers carrying out clinical development of vaccines up to and including phase IIb trials.

  • individual contracts to be valued up to £3m
  • projects should last between 24 and 36 months.

This competition is aimed at supporting candidate vaccines that are ready for, or close to moving into phase I clinical trials. This can include good laboratory practice toxicology or manufacturing activity to support the proposed clinical trial.

Applicants must describe the candidate vaccine or vaccine platform technology they are developing.

They should give details of its:

  • competitive advantage over alternative solutions
  • relevance to global epidemic disease threats
  • anticipated clinical application
  • estimated medical benefit and value. This includes its potential for use in LMICs