Evaluation of ratioNally Designed Influenza vaccines

ongoing

ENDFLU will develop three complementary next-generation influenza vaccination strategies for the world, fueled by the unique combined expertise of Indian and European partners in rational vaccine design and development: • Create a repository of pre-pandemic GMP-compliant MVA-based vaccine seeds, each encoding an influenza hemagglutinin (HA), based on European partners demonstration of clinical safety and cross-clade immunogenicity of MVA-H5. • Optimize and select protein- and MVA-based constructs developed by Indian and European ENDFLU partners, resulting in a rationally combined vaccine formulation that induces broadly protective humoral and cell-mediated immunity against all influenza manifestations. • Pre-clinically advance other promising protein- and MVA-based constructs toward future development beyond ENDFLU. Constructs to elicit humoral immunity build on rationally-designed and optimized conserved epitopes of influenza surface proteins, HA stem- and HA head-nanoparticles, and NA-M2e fusions either as proteins or MVA expressed. Other MVA-based constructs to elicit cell-mediated immunity will encode conserved internal protein T cell epitopes, as an artificial polyepitope. The best candidates will be selected based on biochemical, biophysical, functional and manufacturing criteria, and immunogenicity and protective efficacy in mice and ferrets. The selected protein-based construct will enter a Phase I clinical trial in Europe assessing safety, immunogenicity and optimal dose, to be combined with the selected MVA-based construct. This protein-MVA combination will be GMP produced and toxicologically tested, including in combination with the protein-based construct, for clinical readiness. A dissemination and exploitation plan, and collaboration with key scientific advocacy organizations will facilitate the adoption of ENDFLU achievements to combat influenza worldwide.