Newsletter 01 March-November 2015

Welcome to the first FLUCOP newsletter

Dear All,

We are pleased to present you the first newsletter of the FLUCOP project supported by the Innovative Medicine Iniative (IMI) about standardisation and development of assays for assessment of influenza vaccine correlates of protection which started successfully this year in March and is planned to last until mid 2020.

With this letter we want to update our partners, allies and everyone else who’s interested in our activities and the progress we make.  You are more than welcome to distribute this newsletter to anyone you consider being interested in reading it. Subscribing to or unsubscribing from the newsletter can be easily done via the FLUCOP website.

We hope you will enjoy reading our newsletter,

Best regards,

Patricia Londono-Hayes
EFPIA Project Coordinator
Donata Medaglini
Managing Entity Coordinator
Emanuele Montomoli
Scientific Coordinator

About FLUCOP project

FLUCOP is an Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) project that aims to improve and standardise the existing immunological assays to better evaluate influenza vaccine immunogenicity.  The availability of a tool-box of standardised, validated serological assays for human influenza vaccines, agreed and used by key parties in the private and in the public sector will have tremendous impact on the research and development process globally, and will pave the way for future investigation and definition of correlates of protection for these vaccines.

The FLUCOP project started March 2015 with a five year duration ending February 2020.  The total budget is of €13,999,164 with equal contribution from the IMI and European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).

FLUCOP is a public-private consortium of 22 partners from eigth countries involving experts from six vaccine manufacturers, small and medium sized enterprises, major academic institutions, European public health governmental institutions, and European non-governmental organisations.  The project will include consultation with partners from regulatory agencies – a mechanism ensuring that the regulatory aspects of the standardisation efforts are addressed and duly considered.

You can read more about the project on our FLUCOP website, for example a more detailed project description, or the initial FLUCOP press release.


FLUCOP flyer

A FLUCOP flyer has been developed to broadly communicate the FLUCOP activities and objectives.


FLUCOP kick-off-meeting

The FLUCOP kick-off meeting was held the 20-21 April at Sanofi Pasteur in Lyon, France with the attendance of the FLUCOP partners.  During the two day meeting the vision and challenges of FLUCOP were presented as well as sessions on each work package objectives and deliverables.  The sessions were followed by highlighting the next steps for the project and concluding …

Read more.


News

19 October 2015: WHO Influenza Update

Based on data up to 04 October 2015 the WHO published their Influenza update N° 243 on 19 October 2015.  In summary the global influenza activity generally decreased or remained low in both hemispheres, with only a few countries reporting elevated respiratory illness levels. http://www.who.int/influenza/surveillance_monitoring/updates/latest_update_GIP_surveillance/en/

6-9 October 2015: Impressions from the Influenza Vaccines for the World meeting 2015, Albufeira, Portugal

About 130 industry and academic scientists attended the influenza vaccines for the world 2015 meeting 6-9 October in Albufeira, Portugal.  The meeting was opened by John Oxford who presented a centuries overview on scientific discoveries in the field of influenza research ranging from 1918 to recent discoveries.  Sarah Gilbert (University of Oxford,UK) presented a keynote lecture on universal influenza vaccines and suggested to rephrase this to “a more universal influenza vaccine”.  Data on the importance of T-cell responses to the conserved influenza internal proteins in resistance to heterologous subtypes were shown as well as the virally vectored (Ad / MVA) vaccination regimes employed to induce these responses.

The main topics addressed on egg based influenza vaccines (inactivated and live attenuated) included results on clinical trials comparing …

Read more.


Upcoming events

18-20 November 2015: 4th WHO Informal Consultation on Improving Influenza Vaccine Virus Selection

18 to 20 November 2015, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China With growing awareness of influenza as an important global disease, increasing demand for influenza vaccines, development of new laboratory tests and scientific researches, and emerging new and high throughput technologies, WHO held three informal consultations so far in Geneva 2010, 2011 and 2014.  The aim of these consultations …

Read more.

29-31 Mar 2016: World Vaccine Congress, Washington D.C., USA

The World Vaccine Congress & Expo is a 3 day event held from 29 March to 31 March 2016 in Washington, United States Of America.  This event covers topics including Influenzae and respiratory diseases, emerging global diseases, as well as adjuvant technologies to novel immunotherapies and general information about vaccines and clinical trials.  It is target at vaccine professionals from …

Read more.

25-26 July 2016: International Conference on H1N1 & Influenza Vaccines, Chicago, USA

H1N1 and Influenza Vaccines-2016 brings together the Global leaders in Immunology and relevant fields to present their research at this exclusive scientific program.  The Immunology Conference hosting presentations from editors of prominent refereed journals, renowned and active investigators and decision makers in the field of Immunology.  H1N1 and Influenza Vaccines-2016 Organizing Committee also invites Young investigators at every career stage …

Read more.

Please click here for more events.


The project is supported from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n 115672, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution. You can contact us at: http://www.flucop.eu/contact/