Project data
Funding Entity: European Commission
Call: H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018
Coordinator: Utrecht University (Netherlands)
UNISI Principal Investigator: Gianni Pozzi
Department: Medical Biotechnologies
Start date: 1 January 2019 – End date: 31 December 2023
Description
Infectious diseases are a major burden and constant threat to European populations and economies. While barely perceived as a danger not too long ago, a combination of potential rapid spread of novel pathogens across the globe, antibiotics resistance, a come-back of “old” pathogens and persistence of yet to be combated pathogens has raised the demand for effective but safe vaccines.
An example of a yet to be combated pathogen is the obligate intracellular bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. This pathogen is the major cause of sexually transmitted bacterial disease in humans, and poses a world-wide health concern. While responsive to antibiotics, re-infections frequently occur, urging the need for a prophylactic vaccine. Nevertheless, insufficient knowledge on how to vaccinate against intracellular pathogens hampers the development of such vaccines.
In the proposed project, 5 academic and 2 private partners will cooperate to educate early stage researchers (ESR) in the diverse aspects of novel vaccine development. ESR will design and construct innovative and safe virus-, bacterium-, and plasmid-based vaccine vectors that induce both cell-mediated and humoral immunity, to control infections with intracellular pathogens. They will test these vaccines and improve their efficacy in preclinical models of C. trachomatis infection, and unravel the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the induction of protective immune responses, to uncover possibilities for general vaccine vector optimisation.
The end-result will be a new generation of safe vaccine vectors that can be exploited to vaccinate against C. trachomatis, and can be adapted to vaccinate against further intracellular pathogens of choice. Moreover, this project will educate a new generation of scientists that, through the offered, integrated training, will be ready to enter the European task force, in academia or industry, to find creative solutions to future pathogen-imposed challenges.
Source: Cordis
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme under GA No 812915