The five-year, €10.7 million ADVANCE (‘Accelerated development of vaccine benefit-risk collaboration in Europe’) project is supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and brings together the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as vaccine manufacturers, national public health and regulatory bodies, academic experts, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). ADVANCE is co-coordinated by the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, the University of Basel / University Children’s Hospital Basel in Switzerland, GSK Vaccines (coordinating the vaccine manufacturers in the project) in Belgium, and Synapse Research Management Partners (Project Management) in Spain.

Vaccines undergo rigorous safety testing before regulatory approval. However, efforts to monitor the coverage, benefits and risks of vaccines after approval are rather fragmented. The goal of ADVANCE is to review, develop and test methods, data sources and procedures for an efficient and sustainable pan-European framework that can rapidly deliver robust, quantitative data for the assessment of the benefits and risks of marketed vaccines.

The key to the project’s success lies in the fact that it brings together representatives of all stakeholders, including public health bodies, regulatory agencies, health ministries, vaccine manufacturers, healthcare providers, and of course the general public.

Michel Goldman, IMI Executive Director explained: ‘Collaboration between these diverse groups is very sensitive. By bringing them together around the neutral platform offered by IMI, ADVANCE is in a unique position to pave the way for a framework that will make it easier to rapidly assess the benefits and risks of vaccines. This would help maintain public confidence in immunisation as a successful and effective public health tool to control infectious diseases.’