(Stuttgart) - The Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 (IMI2) Joint Undertaking mobilised more than € 33 million to support Inno4vac, an innovative public-private partnership to accelerate vaccine R&D timelines. It will focus on the design and application of new and highly advanced predictive models to allow a faster development and manufacturing of novel vaccines.

Vaccination is one of the most impactful public health interventions in history, saving the lives of an estimated 2.5 million people every year and protecting millions more from illness and disability. Classical vaccine research and development timelines remain nevertheless long and costly, as it takes on average more than 10 years and costs more than € 800 million to bring a new vaccine to the market. Leveraging advances in technology and data science will be instrumental in providing new paths to vaccine development as the accelerated development of COVID vaccines demonstrated.

Inno4vac is a new interdisciplinary project funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 (IMI2) that aims to foster health innovation by incorporating scientific and technological breakthrough from the academic and biotech sectors into industry. It is coordinated by the European Vaccine Initiative (Germany), with the support from the Sclavo Vaccines Association (Italy), for the scientific coordination, and involves 41 partners from 11 different European countries, including 37 academic institutions and SMEs, as well as GSK, Sanofi Pasteur, CureVac and Takeda as industry partners.

Klaus Mauch, CEO of Insilico says: “The scientific community has recognized the urgent need to significantly reduce the time-to-market for new vaccines, as required by the continued advance of infectious diseases. Therefore, Insilico is excited to be part of the Inno4vac partnership and to work with renowned partners who will make use of Insilico's latest technology platform and modeling experience to accelerate the availability of new vaccines.”

Four main areas will be addressed by Inno4vac in an integrated manner:

(1) artificial intelligence will be used for in silico vaccine immune response and efficacy prediction;

(2) a modular computational platform will be developed for in silico modelling of vaccine bio-manufacturing and stability testing;

(3) new and improved controlled human infection models (CHIM) of influenza, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and Clostridium difficile will be established to enable early vaccine efficacy evaluation, and

(4) novel cell-based human in vitro 3D models will be developed to reliably predict immune protection.

The ultimate goal of the combined effort pursued by Inno4vac is to develop more predictive biological and mathematical models of vaccine performance, and thereby to accelerate the development of new vaccines. The design of a sustainability plan will also be carried out by the project partners to ensure the long-term access to the project results, including models, beyond the duration of the Inno4vac project.

As part of Inno4vac, Insilico will create and validate Digital Twins for cell cultivation to develop innovative solutions for scaling-up and controlling vaccine production in large-scale production plants together with academic and industrial partners.

Quick facts about Inno4vac:
Start Date: 01/09/2021
End Date: 28/02/2027
Coordinator:  European Vaccine Initiative (EVI)

This project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 101007799. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA.

www.imi.europa.eu

About Insilico

Insilico Biotechnology AG develops and delivers predictive Digital Twins to advance  biopharmaceutical process development and manufacturing. Insilico Digital Twins of cell culture  processes lead to superior productivity, product quality and process robustness. Ground  breaking predictive power is achieved by exploiting process data using artificial intelligence and  biochemical networks. As a result, Insilico’s unique approach substantially reduces experimental effort, costs of goods and time to market. Leading biopharmaceutical companies worldwide use
Insilico Digital Twins for cell line development, media design and process control. Founded in  2001, Insilico Biotechnology is a privately held company based in Stuttgart, Germany.