VALIDATE: A vaccine R&D Network for complex intracellular pathogens

正如新冠肺炎大流行所表明的那样，疫苗在控制传染病方面发挥着非常重要的作用。如果世界各地的科学家共同努力，那么比他们单独工作的情况下，可以取得更大的进步。Valid是一个旨在加快针对三类细菌的疫苗开发的网络，这些细菌很难设计疫苗，并在世界各地导致大量疾病和死亡，特别是在低收入国家。这些疾病通常不会吸引大量的研发资金，部分原因是它们主要影响无法支付昂贵疫苗费用的穷人。Valify成立于2017年，从32个创始成员发展到现在在世界各地拥有500多个成员。在过去的五年里，我们支持了我们许多成员的职业发展，并资助了许多小型项目-其中一些项目导致了由MRC和其他全球资助者资助的更大的项目。我们现在希望确保未来四年的资金，这样我们就可以继续支持疫苗研究和疫苗开发人员的职业生涯。我们选择的细菌群会导致结核病(TB)等疾病，人体对它们的反应方式是相似的。它们都非常擅长躲避免疫系统--这意味着它们可以隐藏在体内，并在以后很长一段时间里导致疾病。它们还需要相似类型的免疫反应，才能使身体摆脱它们。在这个网络中，我们将做两件事：1.为我们的成员提供少量资金进行研究，帮助我们了解如何最好地开发针对这些困难细菌的疫苗。提供培训和支持性环境，鼓励青年科学家留在这一领域工作。我们每年都会举行一次网络会议，我们的成员可以来这里展示他们的数据，并会见在该领域工作的其他科学家。我们将定期举办在线讲座，让更多的人加入，特别是来自低收入国家的人。我们将为青年科学家提供到其他实验室接受培训的机会，并将为青年科学家的职业生涯提供指导。我们将与学校合作，增加对这些漏洞的了解。总体而言，在这个网络中，我们的目标是支持疫苗开发，并支持该领域工作人员的职业生涯。

As the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated, vaccines play a really important part in controlling infectious diseases. If scientists work together across the world, then greater progress can be made than if they work alone. VALIDATE is a network which aims to speed up vaccine development for three groups of bugs that are difficult to design vaccines for and which cause a lot of disease and death across the world, particularly in low income countries. These diseases often do not attract lots of research and development funding, in part because they primarily affect poor people who cannot pay for expensive vaccines. VALIDATE started in 2017 and has grown from 32 founding members to now having more than 500 members around the world. Over the last five years we have supported the career development of many of our members and have also funded many small projects - some of which have led on to much bigger projects being funded by the MRC and other global funders. We now want to secure funding for the next four years so we can carry on supporting vaccine research and the careers of people working in vaccine development. Our chosen groups of bugs, which cause diseases like tuberculosis (TB), are similar in how the body responds to them. They are all very good at hiding from the immune system - which means they can stay hidden in the body and cause disease much later in life. They also need similar types of immune responses for the body to be able to get rid of them. In this network, we will do two things:1. Provide small pots of funding for our members to perform research which will help us understand how best to develop vaccines for these difficult bugs.2. Provide training and a supportive environment to encourage young scientists to stay working in this field. We will have a network meeting every year where our members can come and present their data and meet other scientists working in the field. We will host regular talks, which will be online to allow more people to join, particularly from lower income countries. We will offer opportunities for young scientists to have training in other laboratories, and will provide mentoring to support young scientists in their careers. We will work with schools to increase knowledge of these bugs. Overall, in this network, we aim to support vaccine development and also support the careers of people working in this field.