AVaTAR

AVaTAR is a unique translational consortium that uses state-of-the-art models and technologies to provide improved, rapid pre-clinical vaccine candidate evaluation.

AVaTAR addresses a key gap in Australia’s vaccine development ecosystem: the ability to pre-clinically evaluate vaccine efficacy before the costly and time-consuming clinical phase. Improved pre-clinical testing will dramatically increase prospects of clinical and commercial success and reduce the time and risk associated with end-to-end vaccine development. 

The AVaTAR Centre will use traditional and next-generation single-cell technologies to rapidly and accurately triage vaccine candidates at the pre-clinical stage and speed up vaccine development against a range of diseases.

World-leading expertise

AVaTAR is a unique translational R&D initiative that merges expertise from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, UNSW RNA Institute, the UNSW School of Biomedical Sciences, the Kirby Institute, the Vaccine Design and Research Centre (VDRC) at the Australian Institute for Microbiology & Infection (AIMI) at UTS, and St Vincent’s AMR to establish Australia’s first custom-built vaccine evaluation centre.

Together, this expertise creates a unique multi-disciplinary collaboration of Australia’s leading vaccine researchers that dramatically extends Australia’s capacity to develop and test novel vaccines.

Led by world leaders in vaccine evaluation with extensive research and commercial experience, this collaborative facility enables access to resources and expertise normally siloed within research teams. It will ensure that Australian-produced vaccines are evaluated using technologies that correlate with real-world protective immunity, with a higher likelihood of clinical and commercial impact.

AVaTAR offers a variety of partnership options including collaborative research or fee-for-service contracts.