Background
On 7-9th September 2015, WHO convened the second meeting of the Product Development for Vaccines Advisory Committee (PD-VAC). Prior to this meeting, the committee members reviewed vaccine development status summaries for each of 25 different diseases or pathogens were developed as background documents. Of these 25 disease areas, thirteen with the most advanced candidates, or those pathogens perceived as having potential to become an emerging threat, were presented at the meeting. The Committee was asked to advise WHO on strategic priorities based on the following 3 criteria:
- unmet global public health need to be met by new vaccines
- the likelihood of a product achieving clinical proof of concept in the next three years
- the added value of WHO’s engagement in a particular Pathogen area for advancement of progress in a given field.
In addition, the WHO reported the accelerated Ebola vaccine development which has been a major activity since the outbreak began in 2014. Hand-in-hand with this, the WHO introduced the development of the WHO Blueprint for Emergency R&D Preparedness and Research Response. This will comprise of a number of prioritised emerging pathogens, together with identified research and product development priorities, coordination with stakeholder networks, pre-positioned TPPs, agreements, and protocols.
Other cross cutting issues, such as how PD-VAC can support R&D aspects of the Global Vaccine Action Plan, and can support WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) and GAVI’s Vaccine Investment Strategy (VIS) were also presented. All presentations are available on this website.
A total of 25 pipeline vaccine landscape analyses, and the PDVAC meeting report will be published in Vaccine in early 2016, as a special Vaccine supplement. WHO hereby acknowledges the following individuals/groups for providing these valuable resources for the global vaccine R&D community.
Executive summaries of the meetings as well as the agenda, list of participants and presentations can be found below: