Researchers from over 20 international institutions have announced a joint initiative to accelerate the search for an effective HIV vaccine.

The European AIDS Vaccine Initiative (EAVI2020) will bring together a multidisciplinary team of leading HIV researchers from public organisations and biotech companies across Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA in a focused effort to develop protective and therapeutic HIV vaccines.

The big effort will feature a number of Australian players - including the Kirby Institute’s Professors David Cooper, Anthony Kelleher and Miles Davenport alongside University of Melbourne Professors Damian Purcell and Stephen Kent from the Doherty Institute - who are all currently working on creating an effective HIV vaccine in their own laboratories.

“Since the early days of the HIV epidemic, our Australian research community has been at the vanguard of scientific discoveries that have had global implications for the way we prevent HIV and how we diagnose and treat people living with HIV. But despite the tremendous successes we’ve seen, an effective vaccine still remains elusive,” said Professor Anthony Kelleher from the Kirby Institute.

“This project creates a unique opportunity for us to pool the knowledge and expertise of the top minds in HIV research to move much more quickly towards that goal.”

According to the World Health Organization, around 35 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2013.

More than two million people are newly infected every year, and it is estimated around 22 billion US dollars is spent annually on HIV treatment and care.

Although researchers have been working on developing a vaccine for 30 years, recent advances are helping to speed up their quest.

Scientists have isolated antibodies that are able to block HIV infection in preclinical models, and there have been new developments in using synthetic biology to design better vaccines.