Opened in 2001 at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, in London, the Human Immunology Laboratory plays an important role in the development and support of immunology labs as part of IAVI’s global network of collaborating research centers. These laboratories, located in sub-Saharan Africa, India, the UK, Europe and the US, conduct HIV research associated with clinical studies and trials of candidate AIDS vaccines.
The Immunology Lab serves as a central resource for the comparison and prioritization of different candidate vaccines sponsored by IAVI, and provides a resource for the field when IAVI assesses vaccine candidates developed by other stakeholders.
The lab also has a comprehensive program to develop novel qualitative and quantitative assays to assess a wider range of T cell functions, and to optimize assays that already exist. These include assays that better describe the proliferation of T cells, their ability to suppress HIV, and their involvement in immune responses at the mucosal sites where the virus enters the body. Such assays may help researchers better predict the potential efficacy of candidate AIDS vaccines in clinical trials.
Further, the lab collaborates with research centers in Africa to investigate the immunology of the earliest stages of HIV infection and the immune responses of people who manage to control the amount of HIV present in their bodies. Such studies may help elucidate the types of immune responses a vaccine must elicit to protect people from HIV.
The lab also assures the quality and consistency of data generated by collaborating research centers. It has developed Standard Operating Procedures that are used by every immunology laboratory in the lab network supported by IAVI. This helps ensure that data collected at different times and in different places, and even from different trials, are always comparable.
The Human Immunology Lab is in fact a leader in the validation, standardization and quality assurance of assays critical to the assessment of immune responses in HIV vaccine clinical trials. It contributes its expertise in this area as a key player in the Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery, a research consortium funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The laboratory IAVI operates in partnership with the Uganda Virus Research Institute in Entebbe also participates in this standardization work.
The Human Immunology Lab—the first anywhere to gain internationally recognized accreditation for Good Clinical Laboratory Practice (GCLP), which is based on the legal requirements for conducting clinical trial data analyses in Europe and South Africa—has set quality standards for collaborating labs around the world.
It routinely provides training in the techniques and technologies of immunology to laboratory staff at IAVI-supported research centers, in line with IAVI’s efforts to build the technical capacity of its partners in developing countries. The laboratory has trained many scientists and technicians at these institutions in state-of-the-art immunology assays. With IAVI’s support, all the collaborating research centers have either gained GCLP accreditation or are in the process of doing so.
Finally, with substantial capacity and access to state-of-the-art technologies, the lab also functions as a central repository for IAVI. It stores a portion of all samples collected from IAVI-supported vaccine trials and clinical studies. The availability of a well characterized sample bank is invaluable to global vaccine discovery efforts.