IVI & France
French Leadership at IVI
IVI Leadership Team
Dr. Christian Loucq, Director General (2011-2015)
Francois Belin, M.Sc. Deputy Director General, Chief Operating Officer
Dr. T. Anh Wartel, M.D., Deputy Director General, Clinical, Assessment, Regulatory, Evaluation (CARE) unit
Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO (2009)
Dr. Michel Greco, Independent Vaccine Expert (2003-2008)
Professor Jacques Louis, Institut Pasteur (2009-2014)
Scholars in Residence
Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Institut Pasteur (2009)
Professor Philippe J. Sansonetti, Institut Pasteur (2007)
Institute Support Council (ISC)
France participated in IVI’s first Institute Support Council (ISC) in 1997. The ISC was chaired by the UNDP and consisted of government representatives tasked with shaping the direction and focus of the Institute’s activities and securing financial support from governments.
Ongoing IVI-French Collaboration
Covid-19 Vaccine Development with BioNet
IVI is a member of a global consortium led by the French-Thai vaccine manufacturer BioNet, alongside Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University and the Universities of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and California-Davis in the United States, to conduct preclinical studies and clinical trials on a new COVID-19 vaccine. The program is made possible by a $200 million USD grant from CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiative.
Foundation Mérieux Partnerships
IVI and Foundation Mérieux are partner institutions of the Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine Introduction in Africa (THECA) consortium. Current projects include a cluster-randomized vaccine effectiveness trial in Ghana and a mass vaccination campaign in the Democratic Republic of the Congo using Typbar-TCV® (Vi-TT).
IVI and Foundation Mérieux are members of ZikaPLAN (Zika Preparedness Latin American Network), which works to prevent the spread of the Zika virus by developing a better understanding of the disease and building a sustainable preparedness and response capacity in Latin America.
IVI is the lead agency of the Global Dengue & Aedes-Transmitted Diseases Consortium (GDAC). GDAC was created in August 2016 by merging IVI’s Dengue Vaccine Initiative with Foundation Mérieux’s Partnership for Dengue Control, with the intent to expand the mission from dengue vaccines to a broader scope encompassing comprehensive prevention and control measures for Aedes-transmitted diseases including dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya.
IVI is a frequent participant in Foundation Mérieux’s international conferences and workshops.
Previous IVI-French Collaboration
Agence de Médecine Préventive (AMP)
With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IVI and AMP launched the Supporting Independent Immunization and Vaccine (SIVAC) Initiative in 2008, a seven-year project that aimed to support the development of sustainable National Immunization Technical Advisory Groups (NITAGs) in developing countries in Asia and Africa to facilitate evidence-based decision-making processes in the development of national immunization programs and policies.
Epicentre
IVI and Epicentre collaborated on cholera vaccine development projects including a feasibility study of the use of an oral cholera vaccine in Beira, Mozambique and a demonstration project conducted with the WHO in Beira using Dukoral®, which showed vaccination to be feasible, in high demand, and 78%-84% protective against cholera over the first six months.
Foundation Mérieux
An international meeting on “Typhoid fever, a neglected disease: towards a vaccine introduction policy” was held in Annecy, France in April 2007, co-sponsored by the IVI and hosted by the Mérieux Foundation. The meeting made recommendations on the use of typhoid vaccination in Asia for high-risk populations. These recommendations were presented to the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) during its session on typhoid fever in November 2007.
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm)
IVI’s Mucosal Immunology Program and Inserm collaborated in exploring the capacity of the buccal mucosa to serve as a site for inducing mucosal and systemic immune responses. With promising results obtained from joint research conducted by IVI and Inserm, IVI began an initiative in 2007 to develop an internationally competitive mucosal vaccine development program, starting with vaccines against seasonal and pandemic influenza.
In 2006, A joint laboratory program named the IVI-Inserm Associated Laboratory was initiated under IVI’s Molecular Vaccinology Program, where Inserm provided expertise in the isolation and propagation of primary epithelial and dendritic cell lines of human origin for the development of vaccine formulations against selected pathogens.
IVI and Inserm also collaborated on cholera and tuberculosis vaccine development. Major achievements included the implementation of a Phase I trial in France in 2007 of a sublingual safe and efficient in inducing mucosal and systemic immune responses to a prototype cholera vaccine and collaboration with Institut Pasteur in studying the effectiveness of an improved Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine against tuberculosis in newborns.
Institut Pasteur
IVI and Institut Pasteur collaborated on Shigella vaccine development projects including studies of alternative shigellosis murine models for preclinical screening of Shigella vaccine candidates and molecular mechanisms leading to tissue-destructive inflammatory responses caused by Shigella spp.
Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi at Institut Pasteur, discoverer of HIV and co-winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine, presented at the IVI’s international symposium on “Vaccines for the 21st Century” on April 2, 2008.
Sanofi Pasteur
IVI has received numerous grants from Sanofi Pasteur to support vaccine development programs.
Sanofi Pasteur funded IVI’s Respiratory Pathogens Vaccine Program, which aimed to accelerate the introduction of vaccines against Hib, pneumococcal disease, meningococcal disease, and influenza in high-burden countries. Studies of the cost-of-illness from pneumonia and cost-effectiveness of pneumococcal vaccination in the elderly in the Republic of Korea were initiated in 2008 with grants from Sanofi Pasteur.
IVI’s Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative (PDVI) established formal partnership with Sanofi Pasteur in 2006. PDVI worked closely with Sanofi Pasteur and others to support the Phase IIb dengue vaccine safety and efficacy trial in Ratchaburi, Thailand, which began in February 2009. Trial results were published in late 2012.
In 2011, Sanofi Pasteur provided grants to the Dengue Vaccine Initiative (DVI), a consortium of four organizations- IVI, the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Sabin Vaccine Institute, and the WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research (IVR) – that aimed to accelerate the introduction of dengue vaccines.