An army of scientists, engineers, physicians and volunteers at universities, corporations, hospitals and clinics around the world is engaged in the effort to develop an AIDS vaccine. It is important that their efforts be coordinated—to minimize duplication of work and maximize the general rate of progress—without stifling their creativity.

One approach to doing that involves the creation and coordination of consortia and centers of excellence devoted to AIDS vaccine research and development.

For example:

• The Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD), established and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, brings together 400 researchers at 95 institutions in 21 countries to design and assess a variety of novel HIV vaccine candidates and advance the most promising ones to clinical trials IAVI participates in the CAVD
• The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has established a Center for HIV-AIDS Vaccine Immunology that tests new strategies for HIV vaccine design
• IAVI oversees three international consortia—the Neutralizing Antibody Consortium, the Vectors Consortium and the Live Attenuated Consortium—to address critical scientific challenges of AIDS vaccine development and to generate new candidate vaccines for clinical assessment

IAVI has in many publications, including its biennial strategic blueprints, also addressed the direction it believes the global AIDS vaccine effort should be taking. We continually monitor these models of organization to assess their strengths and weaknesses.

Further, IAVI is a founding member of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, an alliance of independent organizations—including the Gates Foundation, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, and the World Health Organization—that seeks to speed AIDS vaccine development by devising a shared plan of action, mobilizing new resources and promoting collaboration between the scattered research institutions working on the problem.

In addition, IAVI Report, a bimonthly journal covering AIDS vaccine R&D published by IAVI, seeks to keep researchers abreast of the latest developments across the field.