The 2010 scientific strategic plan of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise

The 2010 scientific strategic plan of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise

Recognizing the importance of pursuing a diverse range of vaccine concepts and approaches, the 2010 scientific strategic plan of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise prioritizes two main drivers key to the next phase of HIV vaccine research and development that specifically require global collaboration. First, the Plan recognizes that clinical trials and human clinical investigation present an unequalled opportunity to obtain important information about the human immune system and its response to vaccine candidates and that they are pivotal to advancing both vaccine discovery and vaccine development. Human efficacy trials are essential to defining the ability of vaccines to prevent infection or disease and for the discovery of vaccine-induced correlates and signatures of protection, which would ultimately accelerate the development or improvement of HIV vaccines for future licensure and public health use. This scientific imperative—made possible by major advances in laboratory and computational techniques that have opened up complex biological systems, including the human immune system, to rigorous and rapid scientific analysis—underpins the importance of clinical efficacy trials to advancing vaccine discovery and development. Second, the Plan recognizes that trials must be linked to and build upon the tools and concepts of basic biomedical science, including genomics and computational biology, immunology, virology and model systems, to optimize both vaccine design and information on vaccine biology in humans. A strengthened clinical trials effort must therefore be accompanied by sustained, strong support for fundamental vaccine discovery research. In pursuing an increasingly science-driven clinical trials effort, the field will advance promising candidates toward vaccine licensure and, at the same time, contribute fundamental scientific insights that will improve future vaccine design, product development and clinical trials. The 2010 Plan is therefore predicated on a multidisciplinary approach that bridges the lab and the clinic, entrenching human research as intrinsic to the discovery process, and mobilizing the collaborative efforts of basic, preclinical and clinical scientists in highly iterative vaccine design and testing.

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Editors’ note: Eighteen months in the making, the 2010 scientific strategic plan of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise is a blueprint for the HIV vaccine field for the next 5 years. More than 400 researchers, policy makers, funders, and advocates collaborated in this full update of the 2005 scientific strategic plan. The past year has provided insights about the interaction between HIV infection and the human immune system and renewed impetus to the field. The encouraging results of the Thai RV144 trial of a poxvirus-protein prime-boost combination, the first vaccine trial to demonstrate any level of efficacy in preventing HIV acquisition in humans (HIV This Week issue 74), and the discovery of broadly neutralising antibodies (HIV This Week issue 73 and following abstract in this issue) are among the key scientific advances of the past year marking progress on the road to an effective HIV vaccine. Whether you live in the global north or the global south, whether you are a seasoned researcher or a young and early career investigator, or whether you are a policy maker, an advocate, a funder, a regulator, an ethicist, a knowledge translation professional, a communicator, or a community member, a quick read of this forward-looking framework will help you better understand the part that you can play in this global collective undertaking. Together we can succeed in overcoming what some have called the greatest scientific challenge of our time.