| abstract: |
HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria alone account for more than six million deaths worldwide every year. Despite substantial efforts made in recent years, Poverty Related Diseases are still spreading. New therapeutic interventions are therefore urgently required to combat Poverty Related Diseases. The existence of a well-developed HIV/TB/Malaria infrastructure presents a prime opportunity to address other sexually transmitted diseases such as viral hepatitis efficiently and effectively. The overall goal of the EURIPRED is to coordinate and integrate international resources into a single specialised infrastructure to support European HIV, TB, Malaria and Hepatitis B virus and Hepatitis C virus studies from early drug, vaccine and microbicide discovery to clinical trials. This will be achieved by creating partnerships between European scientists and international research teams from disease endemic countries and strong collaborations between industry and public sector research. Although vaccines, drugs and microbicide research is being conducted in the European Union (EU) there is no single European infrastructure that brings international resources and facilities together to develop cost-effective products for the European market. To underpin this need, EURIPRED will integrate worldwide resources to allow European access to shared reagents. This integrated approach will strengthen international cooperation, increase research capacity in EU and developing countries and significantly contribute to the European Research Area (ERA). By minimising fragmentation and duplication of research efforts and pooling fragmented resources EURIPRED can improve European research efficiency and effectiveness. EURIPRED will be built upon the highly successful model of the Centre for AIDS Reagents (CFAR), a twenty-three year old reagent initiative based at the National Institute of Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC), a centre of the Medical Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority Agency (MHRA) and will comprise of a world-class team of experts and repositories with expertise in vaccine, microbicide and drug development for a range of infectious diseases. By engaging international scientific communities, EURIPRED can play a leading role in driving research forward in Europe and beyond. |
