A research team from the University of Queensland has developed a method that can easily create vaccines for a range of known diseases as well as respond rapidly to new ones, putting them at the front line of a potential response to a pandemic.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an international non-profit, has announced $14.7 million in funding for the method to be developed into a pipeline that could develop vaccines in as little as 16 weeks.

Professor Paul Young, one of UQ's lead researchers on the project, said vaccines could take 10 years or longer to be developed to the point they were ready for mass production.

“This will provide a development pathway that is still robust, still appropriate, but allows for a rapid response,” Professor Young said.

“At the moment the development pathway does not allow that rapidity of response.”

The research team has already developed what they call a “molecular clamp” which allows them to quickly synthesise vaccines based on just the genome sequence of the virus, with no live specimen required.

“We start with probably an email that has an attachment listing the sequence of the viral genome, and from that we can synthesise the vaccine,” Professor Young said.

That increases safety, as researchers would not have to handle a potentially volatile live virus, and would allow the vaccine to be developed even faster, as the team would not have to wait for samples to arrive from affected areas.

It also meant when new viruses appeared, a vaccine could be developed just as quickly as for known pathogens.

Jane Halton, CEPI's chair, said they had chosen the consortium led by the UQ team and the CSIRO for the million-dollar grant from a global field of promising projects.

“This technology, we believe, has the potential to make a real difference in respect to some of the viruses that threaten human health globally,” Ms Halton said.

“It is absolutely unique and we believe it has a genuine opportunity to make a huge difference.”

CEPI is funded by donations from countries around the world, as well as private donations, most notably the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with the Australian government on Wednesday donating $4.5 million on top of a previous donation of $2 million.

Ms Halton said countries around the world recognised the value of funding efforts to prevent widespread epidemics.

“You think about SARS, that didn’t actually kill a large number of people, but it had an enormous economic impact,” she said.

“People in the health space worry about individuals being affected, but governments rightly are concerned with trade and travel, they want communities and economies to be able to operate.”

The CEPI funding to UQ will be spread over three years, with a clinical trial of a synthesised influenza vaccine developed through the process scheduled for later this year.

Professor Young said they had also encouraged CEPI to “stress test” the project by using them to develop vaccines for any outbreaks which happened while the project was in development.

Part of the development timeline would be getting final approval for the vaccines from local regulatory bodies, and Professor Young says discussions have already started.

“You wouldn’t want to go forward without testing, so built into that timeline is a toxicology study and a phase one clinical trial in humans,” he said.

“So we would be testing the vaccine in human volunteers before we progress it further, once we’re confident from animal studies that it’s safe."

In addition to rapid-response measures to disease outbreaks, it was hoped the pipeline could also be used to quickly build up stockpiles of vaccines for existing deadly diseases, such as influenza, Ebola, Nipah and MERS coronavirus.