Imagine trying to develop a new vaccine but having to build every piece of equipment and hire every specialist from scratch — it's like opening a restaurant and having to build your own oven, mill your own flour, and grow your own tomatoes. TRANSVAC-DS designed a shared kitchen for vaccine developers across Europe: a permanent network of labs, equipment, and experts that any company or research team can tap into. They produced a detailed blueprint and a five-year business plan for making this shared infrastructure self-sustaining, building on two earlier EU-funded projects that already proved the concept works.
Developing vaccines is extraordinarily expensive and requires specialized facilities, equipment, and expertise that most small and mid-size companies cannot afford to build on their own. Europe's vaccine development capabilities are fragmented across dozens of institutions in different countries, making it hard for any single company to access the full range of services needed to move a vaccine candidate forward.
The project delivered a conceptual design report detailing how to build a permanent, sustainable European vaccine infrastructure, along with a five-year business plan and implementation roadmap. It also launched a project website and produced 9 deliverables documenting the infrastructure concept.
If you are a biotech company with a promising vaccine candidate but lack the in-house capacity for preclinical testing, formulation, or process development — this project designed a pan-European infrastructure across 10 countries and 28 partners that could give you access to shared labs, technical training, and development services without building everything yourself.
If you are a contract manufacturer looking to position yourself in the vaccine development pipeline — this project mapped out where gaps exist in Europe's vaccine infrastructure and produced an implementation plan for a sustainable network. Understanding this roadmap could help you align your service offerings with the infrastructure's planned capabilities.
If you are an animal health company working on veterinary vaccines — this infrastructure was explicitly designed to support both human and veterinary vaccine development. The 28-partner network includes specialized facilities and expertise that could accelerate your vaccine R&D without requiring massive capital investment in your own labs.
The project produced a five-year business plan and conceptual design report, but specific pricing or access fees are not detailed in the available project data. Cost models would likely be defined during the implementation phase that follows this design study.
This was a design study, not a production facility. The main output is a conceptual design report and implementation plan for building a sustainable vaccine infrastructure. Actual industrial-scale capabilities would depend on the infrastructure being built according to these plans.
As an EU-funded Research and Innovation Action, IP generated during the project is governed by Horizon 2020 rules, which generally grant ownership to the partner that generated it. Companies using the future infrastructure would need to negotiate IP terms for any collaborative development work.
TRANSVAC-DS closed in February 2023 and delivered a conceptual design report with a five-year business plan. The project is a design study — meaning it created the blueprint, not the infrastructure itself. Implementation would be a separate phase.
This project builds directly on two previous EU-funded projects (TRANSVAC1 and TRANSVAC2) that already provided vaccine development services, technical training, and R&D support to European researchers. The design study aims to make these proven capabilities permanent and self-sustaining.
The consortium spans 10 countries (BE, CH, DE, DK, ES, FR, IT, NL, PT, UK) with 28 partners: 16 research organizations, 5 universities, 2 industry partners, and 5 other organizations. The coordinator is the European Vaccine Initiative based in Germany.
The 28-partner consortium across 10 countries is heavily research-oriented, with 16 research organizations and 5 universities making up 75% of partners. Only 2 industry partners (7% industry ratio) and 2 SMEs are involved, which is typical for a design study focused on mapping scientific infrastructure rather than commercializing a product. The coordinator, European Vaccine Initiative in Germany, is a well-known non-profit dedicated to vaccine development. For a business looking to engage, the low industry participation means this is still firmly in the planning and academic domain — commercial opportunities would emerge in the implementation phase that follows this blueprint.
Search for the European Vaccine Initiative (EVI) in Heidelberg, Germany — they coordinate the TRANSVAC network and can direct inquiries about infrastructure access or partnership.
Want to understand how Europe's planned vaccine infrastructure could benefit your R&D pipeline? SciTransfer can connect you with the right partners in the TRANSVAC network.
