History & Vision

A Brief History of VALIDATE

In 2017 the UK's Medical Research Council (MRC) opened a grant call for innovative vaccine networks, after recognising a lack of funding for vaccine research via their usual calls, and the importance of vaccines in global public health. Prof Helen McShane (University of Oxford, UK), Prof Helen Fletcher (LSHTM, UK) and Samantha Vermaak (University of Oxford, UK) founded 'VALIDATE: VAccine deveLopment for complex Intracellular neglecteD pAThogEns', originally connecting 32 members based at 22 institutes across 8 countries into a new MRC-funded vaccine network focussed on accelerating the development of efficacious vaccines for TB, leishmaniasis, melioidosis and leprosy. Our vision and aims (below) remain the same, but we have grown since these early days considerably!

In 2021 the Gates Foundation became a co-funder of VALIDATE, and we also received a small Wellcome Enriching Engagement award for our BCG100 activities celebrating the centenary anniversary of the BCG vaccine.

In 2024, VALIDATE Directorship moved to Prof Samantha Sampson at Stellenbosch University, with VALIDATE now having core staff teams at both University of Oxford (UK) and Stellenbosch University (South Africa). VALIDATE expanded it's scientific remit to include all mycobacteria.

In February 2026 VALIDATE welcomed its 1,000th member, with members based at more than 400 institutes across 81 countries today. You can explore some of our key milestones in the interactive timeline below.

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=v2%3A2PACX-1vRMlhWRsrUuxYJDreVFeMpRmL4QVNSIto2_S55IQi8oYUvDsuK72dHKS646-LhwJ5ZuHPRwK8P0xG20&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&width=100%25&height=650

Our Vision

To create an engaged and interactive community.
To accelerate vaccine development for our focus neglected pathogens (Mycobacteria, leishmaniases, Burkholderia pseudomallei).
To help our members progress their careers.

We do so by increasing knowledge dissemination, building collaborations and supporting research and training across our focus pathogens, across species (both vaccine target and model species), across countries and continents, and across disciplines.

Our Aims

Create an engaged and interactive international research community of members all working towards efficacious vaccines for our focus pathogens
Accelerate vaccine R&D for our focus pathogens
Create new cross-pathogen, cross-continent, cross-species, and cross-discipline research collaborations
Fund important research via Pump-priming and Fellowship grants
Facilitate career progression for our early career researcher members, particularly (recognising inequality in career progression in our field) researchers based in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) and those identifying as female
Provide useful and relevant information to our Members about research, and funding and career development opportunities
Influence government, funders and the media on the importance of vaccine development for these pathogens
Help interested people in the general public find out more about our research and the diseases we’re tackling in an accessible format

You can find out about our activities and our impact and achievements on this website.

VALIDATE members at the Annual Meeting in South Africa