Overview

The Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise was established in 2003 as a collaborative global effort to promote the development of a safe and effective HIV vaccine.  The Gates Foundation set out to advance this mission by contributing more than $287 million in support of HIV vaccine development and discovery.  The Foundation awarded funds to eleven consortia that will focus on novel methods in HIV vaccine design and five central laboratories and data analysis facilities that will provide state-of-the-art technologies to evaluate HIV vaccine candidates.  These sixteen grants are collectively known as the Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD).

 

Dr. Barton Haynes, Director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) and Director of the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology leads one of the Vaccine Discovery Consortia (VDC) titled, “Broadly Reactive Neutralizing Antibodies: Novel Strategies for Vaccine Design.”  The goal of this VDC is to develop a vaccine that elicits neutralizing antibodies against HIV, currently a major hurdle in HIV vaccine research.  With the assistance of this grant and in conjunction with CHAVI studies, Dr. Haynes and his colleagues will pursue several novel design strategies including using recombinant vectors to deliver immunogens and using autoantigens to elicit antibody responses. 

 

Dr. David Montefiori, a DHVI collaborator, leads the “Comprehensive Antibody Vaccine Immune Monitoring Consortium,” an international network of laboratories that will conduct diagnostic testing to determine the immunogenicity of viable vaccine candidates.  Specifically, this consortium with be evaluating the capacity of vaccine candidates to elicit neutralizing antibodies, therefore, Dr. Montefiori’s work will complement the vaccine discovery consortium led by Dr. Haynes.  As one of the goals of the vaccine discovery consortia is to induce broadly cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies, this consortium will help establish a standardized evaluation system to which all of the central facilities will adhere in order to communicate a broad spectrum of results more efficiently.