Pandemic preparedness and response: Immunogenicity of viral proteins of viruses with epidemic and pandemic potential

As shown by the COVID-19 pandemic, infectious diseases remain a major threat to health and health security in the EU and globally. Viral disease emergence is expected to accelerate due to among other factors, climate change, and thus a proactive approach to the development of vaccines and inhibitors for the cellular uptake of viruses in preparedness for future infectious disease outbreaks is needed. The availability of vaccines against pathogens with high pandemic potential meeting the criteria identified by the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA)[[https://health.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-07/hera_factsheet_health-threat_mcm.pdf]] would provide a critical preparedness measure against future health threats.

Proposals should identify targets for optimal vaccine design for those pathogens where information on host-pathogen interaction and viral surface structures is already available. These surface structures may require further characterisation. It is necessary to determine the extent of genetic variation with a view to develop vaccines with variant efficacy. In addition, it is necessary to develop animal and alternative models for the testing of vaccine candidates and for the kinetics, strength, breadth and persistence of the immune response. Proposals should focus on the following viruses: Hendra and Nipah Virus, Lassa virus, Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever virus, Rift Valley fever virus, Ebola and Marburg virus, Dengue virus, Yellow Fever virus, Zika virus, West Nile fever virus and Chikungunya virus.

Proposals should provide innovative approaches with the aim to diversify and accelerate the global pandemic preparedness research and development pipeline for emerging and re-emerging viral infections, and to strengthen the role of the EU in therapeutic research and development, and therefore contributing to the work of the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA).

Proposals should address several of the following areas:

• Identification of key antigenic targets for the priority pathogens as mentioned above.
• Improvement or, if necessary, establishment of animal models for the testing of vaccine candidates where alternative models are not available.
• Characterisation of the immunogenicity of antigenic targets in appropriate animal or alternative models and in pre-clinical tests.
• Inclusion, if possible, of proof-of-concept studies in humans of the vaccine candidate.

Applicants envisaging to include clinical studies should provide details of their clinical studies in the dedicated annex using the template provided in the submission system. See definition of clinical studies in the introduction to this work programme part.