UiB joins international cooperation to innovate vaccine development

"Inno4Vac" is a public-private project coordinated by the European Vaccine Initiative (EVI). The collaboration involves more than 41 partners from 11 European countries.

The overall goal of the project is to develop better tools to accelerate the development and production of new vaccines.

Professor Rebecca Jane Cox at the Influenza Centre is UiB's representative in the collaboration. The University of Oslo will also contribute as one of two academic institutions in Norway. 

– To be able to develop vaccines faster, we need to better understand the immune system, and have good human models to produce vaccines in a more flexible way, says Cox. 

A key part of the project is to use artificial intelligence and 3D models to understand more about how infection occurs, and how new vaccines can be produced more efficiently. 

Cox is mainly involved in the influenza part of the project, where volunteers will take part in the research to be able to find out more about how the immune system responds to vaccines.

– We have had flu vaccines for 60-70 years, but the goal is to develop better vaccines that provide a broader protection, says the professor at UiB. 

To develop a new vaccine is usually a long and expensive process. On average it takes approximately 10 years before the vaccine is on the market. Utilizing new technology and data science will therefore be crucial in facilitating faster vaccine development, as shown with the Covid 19-vaccines. 

The project will start up on September 1st and will run until the 28th of February 2027.

Click here to read the full press release from EVI.