IAVI To Partner With Ragon Institute

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ragon Institute to accelerate the development of new and promising AIDS vaccine candidates for testing.

As part of this partnership, the Ragon Institute and IAVI will work together to identify promising concepts generated by the institute that can be advanced to clinical trials with technical support from IAVI. In addition, this partnership is expected to facilitate productive exchanges among leading researchers affiliated with both IAVI and its network of scientific consortia and the Ragon Institute.

Phillip Ragon, who co-funded the Ragon Institute, said: “This partnership offers great promise to help accelerate progress towards developing a vaccine to stop the AIDS pandemic. With declining interest in vaccines by pharmaceutical companies, public- private product development partnerships (PDPs) like IAVI have become a critical resource. This partnership will be indispensable in providing the speed, flexibility and technical expertise to advance promising early-stage concepts that will arise from the scientists at the Ragon Institute. As someone personally committed to helping solve the AIDS problem, I am excited to have this relationship with IAVI to help us move forward with the greatest possible speed.”