International Veterinary Vaccinology Network

In many 'low-middle-income-countries' (LMICs) the livestock sector (including poultry and aquaculture) accounts for up to 80% of agricultural GDP, with a majority of the rural poor raising livestock as a means of securing or diversifying income. Improving livestock productivity through the development and deployment of effective veterinary vaccines is thus critical not only to secure food supply and contain the many zoonotic (i.e. transmissible from animal to human) diseases that are prevalent in LMICs, but also to secure income and thus offer a pathway for alleviating poverty. Despite several successful multi-national collaborations addressing livestock health in LMICs there is still not a 'universal' Network that can be readily accessed by all researchers working on veterinary vaccine development for LMIC-application. There is also a continuing unmet demand for increased knowledge and technology transfer between researchers in the UK and LMICs and also between researchers in the human and veterinary vaccinology communities. Here we propose the formation of an International Veterinary Vaccinology Network (IVVN) that provides a forum for the integration of inputs from biological scientists, other specialists (e.g. economists), industry, policymakers and regulatory bodies to focus specifically on development of vaccines for priority livestock diseases of LMICs. By establishing an integrated community and facilitating the formation of strategically devised collaborations between scientists with complementary expertise, the IVVN will enable new approaches to tackling the many scientific 'bottle-necks' that frustrate vaccine development to be adopted. As many of the scientific obstacles that impede development of vaccines are common to both human and veterinary vaccinology, the research conducted by IVVN members will frequently have implications for human vaccine development and so fulfil a 'one-health' remit. The IVVN will actively seek to engage scientists and industrial partners (including those who may not usually consider applying their skills to LMIC or veterinary problems) from the breadth of disciplines that can be applied to vaccine development. The IVVN will provide opportunities for new inter-disciplinary partnerships that tackle specific scientific challenges to be formed (member-led annual scientific meetings and workshops) and then support these partnerships by funding preliminary experiments to generate novel scientific findings (pump-priming funding and laboratory exchanges) that will contribute to the development of new vaccines. The IVVN will identify opportunities across the whole spectrum of veterinary vaccinology where application of new scientific approaches can effectively address long-standing obstacles to vaccine design; to keep abreast of these opportunities the IVVN has assembled a management board that has a wide profile of veterinary and human vaccinology expertise that will enable rapid integration of new scientific developments and challenges and recruitment of new IVVN members that can bring access to these. This new Network will work alongside the UK Veterinary Vaccinology Network (UK-VVN); overlap of the management groups and membership of the two networks will ensure they function collaboratively and bring mutual benefits. To achieve its aim, it is essential that the IVVN considers vaccinology within the context of the agricultural sectors of LMICs; this knowledge will be provided by LMIC vaccinologists and industrial partners whose representation and leadership will be fundamental to the success of the IVVN.