Abbreviation | RaDVaC |
---|---|
Formation | March 2020 |
Type | 501(c)(3) organization |
Purpose | To design, produce, test, and share open-source vaccine research in an effort to accelerate and strengthen COVID-19 vaccine development |
Key people | Preston Estep, Alexander Hoekstra, Don Wang, Ranjan Ahuja, Brian M. Delaney, George Church |
Website | radvac |
The Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RaDVaC) is a non-profit, collaborative, open-source vaccine research organization founded in March 2020 by Preston Estep and colleagues from various fields of expertise, motivated to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic through rapid, adaptable, transparent, and accessible vaccine development.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] The members of RaDVaC contend that even the accelerated vaccine approvals, such as the FDA's Emergency Use Authorization, does not make vaccines available quickly enough.[10] The core group has published a series of white papers online,[11] detailing both the technical principles of and protocols for their research vaccine formulas, as well as dedicated materials[12] and protocols[13] pages. All of the organization's published work has been released under Creative Commons non-commercial licenses, including those contributing to the Open COVID Pledge.[14] Multiple individuals involved with the project have engaged in self-experimentation to assess vaccine safety and efficacy. As of January 2022, the organization has developed and published twelve iterations of experimental intranasal, multivalent, multi-epitope peptide vaccine formulas, and according to the RaDVaC website, by early 2021 hundreds of individuals had self-administered one or more doses of the vaccines described by the group.