Oslo, Norway, Dec 10, 2018 — The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Imperial College London have announced a partnering agreement, worth up to USD8·4 million, to develop a self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) vaccine platform that enables tailored—just-in-time—vaccine production against multiple viral pathogens.

The idea behind this saRNA approach is to harness the body’s own cell machinery to make an antigen (ie, a foreign substance that induces an immune response) rather than injecting the antigen directly.

Currently, vaccines can take 10 years or more to develop. They must go through many phases of development—including research, discovery, pre-clinical testing, clinical testing, and regulatory approval. However, epidemics, by their nature, are sporadic, unpredictable and fast-moving. Through this partnership, CEPI aims to develop vaccines against new and unknown pathogens (also referred to as Disease X) within 16 weeks from identification of antigen to product release for clinical trials.

Under the terms of the agreement, Imperial will lead a consortium to develop “RapidVac”: a broadly applicable, synthetic, self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) vaccine platform. Imperial will use their RapidVac platform to produce vaccines against influenza (H1N1), Rabies virus, and Marburg virus, and look to move these products forward to phase 1 clinical testing in humans.

If successful, this platform could transform regional and global preparedness against outbreaks of Disease X, enabling rapid production of large volumes of effective “single-shot” vaccines (ie, providing protection against infection with only one injection) or “cocktail” vaccines (effective against different pathogens) in a matter of weeks.

In September, 2017, CEPI requested proposals for so-called vaccine platform technologies that enable rapid vaccine development, elicit rapid onset of immunity, and whose production can be scaled-up quickly to respond to outbreaks of Disease X. This partnership represents CEPI’s first investment in such platform technologies.

Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, said: