"The TRANSVAC infrastructure will accelerate the pharmaceutical and clinical development of promising vaccine candidates by bringing the gap between academic research and clinical trials through carefully managing the advancement of promising vaccine candidates from preclinical animal models to early proof-of-principle studies in humans. Although expertise already exists within Europe spanning different disease types, there is currently very limited coordination between vaccine R&D groups, assay developers and vaccine producers. Unarguably, fragmentation of expertise and facilities has slowed, and in some instances distinctly impeded, the development and validation of promising vaccine candidates. To address these challenges the European vaccine development community needs to establish a collaborative vaccine development infrastructure based on shared visions and goals. The European Vaccine Initiative (EVI) and the Tuberculosis Vaccine Integrated (TBVI) Project have each demonstrated significant success in creating the know-how and infrastructures to enable the advancement of European vaccine development. In order to sustain the momentum generated by EVI and TBVI these successes will be built-upon to create an infrastructure driven by EVI, in which all stakeholders commit to sharing facilities and knowhow on vaccine development. This consortium (TRANSVAC) will comprise major European stakeholders with expertise, resources and facilities for each stage of vaccine development, from the scientific community as well as vaccine developers. Each stakeholder can add to what EVI and TBVI have already established by adding their own expertise to the TRANSVAC long term strategy. TRANSVAC will be the European driving force for vaccine development, and will be accessible to any interested parties. This consortium will initiate a new era in the innovative, harmonised and rapid development of accessible and efficacious vaccines for Europe and the rest of the world."