Clinical modelsClinical trials are necessary to make sure new vaccines are safe and effective but are increasingly costly. Imperial is focused on more efficient ways to test vaccines while applying the knowledge gained from these trials to further understand and improve them.

  • Vaccines need to be tested to make sure they are safe and effective. In every case, this must ultimately be done in people. Increasingly, the costs and risks of the large clinical trials required are limiting the speed at which we can develop effective vaccines and make them available.
  • Imperial is highly focused on early-stage clinical trials in which new vaccines are tested for safety and ability to stimulate immune responses. Conducting these studies safely and efficiently helps to accelerate the development of new vaccines. Furthermore, understanding of how vaccines used in clinical trials are working allows us to go back and continually improve them, informing us about aspects of the pathogen; human immunology; and effectiveness of different delivery methods.
  • Imperial is also at the forefront of experimental medicine strategies to drive forward vaccine development using controlled human infection models. Here, volunteers are deliberately infected with pathogens, including influenza, rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and malaria, allowing us to investigate human immunology in unprecedented detail.

Key members of this theme

General enquiries


Clinical Senior Lecturer
Dr Christopher Chiu

vaccine.network@imperial.ac.uk
+44 (0)20 8383 2301