NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Pfizer said today it will join the Human Vaccines Project, a public–private consortium focused on speeding up development of vaccines and immunotherapies against major infectious diseases and cancers by decoding the human immune system.

Infectious diseases the Project is targeting include influenza, dengue, and HIV.

“The translation from preclinical to clinical vaccine research has often been hampered by a lack of understanding of the desired human immune responses required to obtain optimal vaccine protection,” Kathrin U. Jansen, Ph.D., svp and head of Vaccines Research & Development at Pfizer, said in a statement.”

Pfizer joins Crucell/Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), MedImmune, Regeneron, Sanofi Pasteur, and nonprofit vaccine developer Aeras as partners in the Project—along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.