Dr. Deborah Birx, a world-renowned medical expert and American household name, started her career as a bench researcher trying to understand host pathogen interactions. She’s fascinated by sophisticated feedback loops, and she describes the immune system as one of the most sophisticated: physically precise with the ability to rapidly self-regulate. She was in the thick of T-cell and B-cell research when HIV struck.

“In the early ‘80s, we didn’t know what this virus was,” says Dr Birx. “It wasn’t until 1985 that we could really identify HIV, but we were seeing patients in ’82. It was devastating to have young people dying from a mysterious illness that we couldn’t contain.”

Dr. Birx spent 25 years in the U.S. military taking care of patients while also advancing HIV vaccines through clinical development. That’s where she met Dr. Jerome Kim, Director General of IVI, who worked in her lab and led a large vaccine efficacy trial in Thailand testing a combination of two vaccine candidates. RV144, as this trial was called, remains the only demonstration to date of preventing HIV prevention.

By 1996, a therapeutic became available in the U.S., and one could live a full life with an early diagnosis of HIV. However, there was a stark disparity in who could access this treatment. “We had the cocktail that saved people’s lives,” she says. “Yet none of that was available in low- and middle-income countries. Seeing the importance of access and global access in combatting infectious diseases, whether it’s a vaccine or a therapeutic, became my life mission.”

Dr. Birx shares this mission with IVI, which aims to accelerate vaccines for poverty-associated infectious diseases and help implement their accessibility and use. To better deliver on its founding premise, IVI launched a new advisory body, the Global Advisory Group of Experts (GAGE), to guide strategic engagement with governments, industry partners, and funding organizations. Dr. Birx chairs the GAGE, and other members include:

• Anders Nordström (Vice Chairperson), Ambassador for Global Health, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden
• Agnès Buzyn, Professor of Hematology at Paris-Sorbonne University and former Minister of Solidarity and Health, France
• Carla Vizzotti, Minister of Health, Argentina
• Kyung-wha Kang, Professor at Ewha Womans University and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea
• Samba Sow, Director of the Center for Vaccine Development and former Minister of Health and Public Hygiene, Mali
• Yasuhiro Suzuki, President of the International University of Health and Welfare, Japan

IVI held its first GAGE meeting on October 20 in Seoul ahead of its annual State Forum. The primary objectives of the GAGE are to facilitate partnerships and program delivery through diplomacy, engage multi-laterals and governments to remove roadblocks and promote innovation, and help foster collaboration. While IVI’s Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) provides rigorous scientific direction to IVI’s research teams, the GAGE guides IVI on matters of global health and diplomacy.

The formation of the GAGE coincided with IVI’s 25th anniversary as well as a global push for greater collaboration and solidarity in responding to infectious diseases and pandemic threats. While vaccines are developed in IVI’s labs and progress through clinical trials with partners and sites around the world, another essential pillar of IVI’s work is generating the necessary evidence for governments to make informed policies around vaccination and working with communities to increase vaccine trust and uptake.

“What IVI understands is that it’s great to have new, innovative vaccines, but they don’t mean anything unless you can get them into people’s arms,” says Dr. Birx. A missing piece in the global COVID-19 response was translating science into a tool that gets used. Dr. Birx describes a different kind of positive feedback loop involving donors, governments, and the community: the development of new vaccines and therapeutics, policies to ensure their accessibility, and an informed and empowered community that understands how they work.

According to Dr. Birx, getting vaccines into arms and mounting an effective, coordinated response against infectious diseases requires four intersecting factors: 1) transparent information-sharing between high- and low- and middle-income countries; 2) access to vaccines, diagnostic tests, and therapeutics; 3) addressing adult vaccine hesitancy; and 4) early education on how vaccines are made and why they are important.

“If we put into place what’s needed to control the current pandemic, we’ll be ready for the next one,” she says.

by Aerie Em

Last updated December 27, 2022