What are the health needs and challenges?

According to WHO, HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, having claimed more than 35 million lives so far. In 2017, 940 000 people died from HIV-related causes globally. There were approximately 36.9 million people living with HIV at the end of 2017 with 1.8 million people becoming newly infected in 2017 globally.

The most vulnerable and impoverished people in the world continue to bear the heaviest burden of this merciless disease: in Africa there were 25.7 million people living with HIV in 2017. The African region also accounts for over two thirds of the global total of new HIV infections.

The best long-term solution to the growing global AIDS epidemic is a vaccine, which does not yet exist.

Partnership activities and how they address needs and challenges

Launched in 1996, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is a nonprofit scientific research organization dedicated to addressing urgent, unmet global health challenges including HIV and tuberculosis. Its mission is to translate scientific discoveries into affordable, accessible public health solutions for the people who need them most.

IAVI’s works to:

• Discover – new approaches to developing vaccines and other means of preventing HIV.
• Accelerate – discovery, translational and clinical research through laboratories in the US, India, Africa, and the UK.
• Strengthen – in-country vaccine research capacity through a unique network of clinical research partners in Africa.
• Partner – with leading scientists in academia, government, and industry in the US and Europe. IAVI applies the latest biopharmaceutical industry product development expertise to develop innovative products tailored to the needs of at-risk populations.
• Share – IAVI’s resources with other innovators to help the HIV community as a whole succeed.
• Extend – IAVI’s core capabilities in HIV disease prevention to solving other global health challenges.

IAVI‘s scientific team works with more than 50 academic, commercial and government institutions to develop and assess candidate HIV vaccines. IAVI has partnered with local research institutions to develop a network of sophisticated laboratories in India and in southern and eastern Africa. IAVI also has brought leading HIV researchers together into scientific consortia, including the Neutralizing Antibody Consortium and the Vectors Consortium, to address key obstacles to the development of an effective AIDS vaccine and to generate novel candidates.

Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and IAVI entered into an agreement to develop an HIV vaccine based on the company’s AdVac adenovirus vector technology and obtained the rights from J&J to use a cell line for these vectors. A Phase I clinical trial evaluating safety and immunogenicity of a candidate vaccine based on this technology started in 2009.

In August 2010 Janssen and IAVI announced their participation in an international Phase I clinical trial in the United States and Africa of a combination of two Ad-based AIDS vaccine candidates, Ad26.ENVA.01 and Ad35-ENV, in healthy adults who are not infected with HIV. The clinical trial, led by IAVI has started in October 2010, representing a collaboration between IAVI, Janssen, the Ragon Institute, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a major teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.