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Strep A Vaccine Global Consortium (SAVAC) 2.0

The mission of SAVAC, the Strep A Vaccine Global Consortium, to ensure that safe, effective and affordable Strep A vaccines are available and implemented to decrease the burden of Strep A disease in the most in need.

SAVAC logo

Investigators

  • Prof. Jonathan Carapetis | SAVAC Executive Committee Member | The Kids Research Institute Australia
  • A/Prof. Hannah Moore | SAVAC Burden Of Disease Working Group Lead| The Kids Research Institute Australia
  • Dr Jeffrey Cannon | SAVAC Health Economist | The Kids Research Institute Australia
  • Dr Belaynew Taye | SAVAC Burden Of Disease Working Group Epidemiologist| The Kids Research Institute Australia
  • Dr Razieh Ahmady | SAVAC Research Officer | The Kids Research Institute Australia

External collaborators

SAVAC Executive Committee Members:

  • Dr. Jerome H. Kim, International Vaccine Institute
  • Prof. Andrew Steer, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
  • Prof. David Bloom, Harvard School of Public Health
  • Prof. Shiranee Sriskandan, Imperial College
  • Prof. Liesl Zühlke, University of Cape Town
  • Prof. Edwin J. Asturias, University of Colorado
  • Dr. Chris A. Van Beneden
  • Prof. Ruth A. Karron, Johns Hopkins University

Funder:

Wellcome Trust

SAVAC

The mission of SAVAC, the Strep A Vaccine Global Consortium, to ensure that safe, effective and affordable Strep A vaccines are available and implemented to decrease the burden of Strep A disease in the most in need. 

  • SAVAC will produce a Strep A full value of vaccines analysis with both a business case and global health investment case for GAS vaccines
  • SAVAC will build up a framework to estimate broader economic and societal impacts of vaccination at the population-level
  • SAVAC contributes to increasing the awareness of the GAS vaccine development and facilitating the efficient allocation of available resources in the uptake of new vaccines
  • SAVAC is aligned to the WHO Strep A Vaccine Research and Development Roadmap
  • SAVAC aims to represent the international Strep A vaccine community with a central networking and connecting role
  • SAVAC has a role in identifying and filling research and development gaps for Strep A vaccines broadly, including advocacy/awareness, epidemiology/burden, pipeline, correlates, and funding

SAVAC will pursue a strategy based on:

  • Advocacy and Communication
    • The foundation of this strategy is communication – SAVAC must make Strep A a larger Global Health priority among funders and countries. It will make use of the World Health Assembly resolution calling for a reduction in Strep A burden, highlighting the role that vaccines can play as a cost-effective solution to this problem. Although the Wellcome Trust funding does not specifically fund advocacy per se, SAVAC will retain communication, advocacy and awareness-raising as a critical element of its work, and seek resources from other sources to amplify these efforts. This includes development and maintenance of a website where up-to-date Strep A related news / research may be easily referenced, with a particular focus on Strep A vaccines, and where a clear and informative summary of Strep A as a global problem can be easily accessed. The website will link to available news, resources, advocacy, and social media to enhance the visibility and improve appreciation of the Strep A problem.
  • Coordination
    • The Strep A field is small, so that, to the extent possible, SAVAC will ensure that its efforts and resources will be coordinated to avoid redundancy within the SAVAC community and with other Strep A activities.
      FundingStrep A is underfunded relative to disease burden. SAVAC will (i) seek additional funding for SAVAC activities including Communication/Advocacy and the work of other Working Groups and (ii) encourage funding agencies and industry to increase investment in Strep A vaccine development and more broadly in Strep A research. Strep A should also be recognized as a poverty-related disease and as pathogen highly relevant for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in order to qualify for funding by the European Union, EDCTP and AMR biomedical research programs.
  • Science
    • Strep A vaccine development should be grounded in science, mindful of ethical and safety requirements. This includes knowledge of burden, pathogenesis, immunity, auto-immunity, vaccine development, correlates of risk and immune protection, and safety. Of these, only the vaccine safety workstream is supported by the initial funding from the Wellcome Trust, but all workstreams are essential. SAVAC will retain them as critical elements, seeking funding for them where possible.
  • Vaccine Development, Supply and Access
    • The common goal of Strep A vaccine development is to reduce the broad Strep A disease burden, and so vaccine developers must be mindful not only of the science but of the downstream elements of vaccine development – manufacturing and supply, demand, cost, policy, and financing. The Consortium will help, through the FPVV, to identify, anticipate and de-risk issues that might impede the efficient adoption of effective Strep A vaccines, aligned with the WHO vision for the future of vaccine life course programs with coverage and equity as central considerations.

Find out more about SAVAC 2.0 here.