Novartis Vaccines Institute for Global Health (NVGH)

Novartis Vaccines Institute for Global Health (NVGH) is a research institute with a nonprofit mission dedicated to the translational research and development of vaccines for diseases of the developing world.

Inaugurated in February 2008, NVGH is located on the Novartis Campus in Siena, Italy where it shares the world-class facilities and technologies of the company’s vaccines research headquarters. The Institute will work with universities, research institutes and other public and private organizations to develop the scientific basis for vaccine development and bridge an existing gap between the discovery of promising vaccine candidates in academic research institutes and their manufacturing and distribution, by providing the facilities and expertise for scale vaccine production and human proof of concept studies. NVGH will also collaborate with organizations such as the GAVI Alliance, the WHO and UNICEF.

At present, most NVGH research is focused on conjugate vaccines for enteric diseases. Initial disease areas will be Salmonella enterica serovar typhi (S. typhi), Salmonella paratyphi A and nontyphoidal salmonellae (NTS), which are important causes of infection and disease in children. In Africa, multidrug-resistant non-typhoidal salmonella (NTS) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and high mortality in children under 5 years of age, second in importance only to pneumococcal disease. With more than 4.5 billion cases per year, diarrheal diseases are ubiquitous around the globe.