Inno4Vac Annual Meeting 2025 held in Frankfurt, Germany
- danielreem
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
October 2025
The 4th Inno4Vac Annual Meeting and its subtopic satellite meetings were held from 7-9 October 2025, in Frankfurt, Germany, involving more than 80 representatives from the project's 41 Partner organisations. The event was organised by the European Vaccine Initiative (EVI) with financial support from Sanofi
The meeting was an opportunity to summarise progress made over the past year, showcase some of the consortium’s young scientists’ work during the general sessions, and to engage in targeted, in-depth scientific discussions to explore ideas and inform ongoing and future activities, especially during the four subtopic satellite meetings.
Members of the project’s Scientific and Ethics Advisory Committee (SEAC) were in attendance, providing valuable feedback on the results presented to ensure the relevance and quality of the research being conducted. The meeting also provided the opportunity to convene the project’s Steering Committee and General Assembly to discuss and decide on actions influencing the future course of the project, including the sustainability planning to assure long-term impact of the project outputs.
A poster session was held, giving participants the option to display and discuss further results of their research. Consortium partners were invited to view and vote on their favourite posters. Helene Mehling from the University of Würzburg had the winning poster, titled “3D mucosal infection models as validation tools for vaccine development,” detailing work done within Subtopic 3.
As in previous years, all four of the project’s interlinked subtopics held individual satellite meetings, where in-depth discussions were held to advance progress toward specific project goals:
Subtopic 1: Systems-immunology platform for model development, aims to develop an open-access, cloud-based platform for in silico assessment of vaccine immunogenicity. An overview of the platform architecture was provided, emphasizing its user-friendly design. In brief, the platform combines tools and models for predicting the interaction between immune receptors and the corresponding antigen or peptide presented on HLA molecules, as well as kinetic modeling of the germinal center response. The included tools are NetMHCpan-4.1, NetTCR-2.1, Hyphasma, Absolut!, immuneSIM, and immuneML. At present, the Subtopic 1 team is performing biological experiments that should contribute to refinement of the predictive tools to enable higher resolution.
Subtopic 2: Controlled Human Infection Models, is dedicated to the development of new and improved controlled human infection models (CHIMs) and to position them in the regulatory framework by addressing hurdles to regulatory acceptance in global vaccine development efforts. The meeting provided an opportunity to address recent advances in challenge strain
selection, animal pre-clinical work, challenge agent manufacturing and future clinical trial preparation, and regulatory acceptance. Major progress has been made in the development of the three CHIMs, with the start of clinical studies for RSV and C. difficile, and the initiation of the Influenza challenge strain manufacture. In-depth discussions were held on the immunological assays and other exploratory readouts to be performed on samples obtained in the CHIM trials to maximise output in collaboration with Subtopics 1 and 3. Further discussions centered around the development of a roadmap for CHIMs, and sustainability to ensure access to challenge agents and CHIM samples after the end of the project.
Subtopic 3: State-of-art innovations in human in vitro 3D mucosa models and assays, made advancements in the development of in vitro 3D cell-based models for applications in vaccine research and clinical trials. In the meeting, scientists shared the progress in simulating pathogen-immune interactions in these systems, with focuses on
gastro-intestinal, urovaginal, and respiratory systems. The next steps needed to validate the models were discussed, considering the scientific outcomes, protocol standardization, and regulatory acceptance. A key outcome of the meeting was a detailed discussion between the model developers and the CHIM trial organizers in Subtopic 2 to align on how clinical samples from the trials can be best utilized by the models. The Subtopic 3 leaders also engaged in planning for ensuring the long-term availability and utilization of the models beyond the Inno4Vac project lifespan.
Subtopic 4: Bio-manufacturing platorms using mathematical modelling, has developed multiple models covering both upstream and downstream stages of vaccine production and presented most recent results during the meeting. The models simulate vaccine bio-manufacturing by combining computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with kinetic models of
host cell metabolism, as well as centrifugation, chromatography, control, and importantly a module on forecasting vaccine product stability. These model developments and applications have led to several publications and most of the ST4 models have been integrated into an open-access online platform, which allows convenient access for users across both academia and industry (https://github.com/cadet & https://jupyter.cadet-web.de/). Some of the core topics discussed and advanced during the meeting were the accessibility of the tools, graphical user interfaces, application in industry settings, educational purposes, user engagement, and upcoming publications.
The fourth annual meeting was an important opportunity for the entire Inno4Vac consortium to come together, exchange ideas, and further advance project progress.
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Contact:
Dr. Nicola Viebig (Director of Research at the European Vaccine Initiative)
Email: nicola.viebig@euvaccine.eu
This project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 101007799 (Inno4Vac). This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA (www.imi.europa.eu). This communication reflects the author´s view and neither IMI nor the European Union, EFPIA, or any Associated Partners are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.