Pneumococcal disease, caused by the bacterial pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae, is responsible for more than 1 million deaths each year. All currently licensed vaccines are based on the capsular polysaccharide and protect against only a subset of the >100 capsular serotypes identified to date. The long-term effectiveness of these vaccine approaches is ultimately limited by serotype replacement, where declines in the incidence of disease caused by vaccine-included serotypes have been associated with increases in non-vaccine serotypes. To address this challenge, we are developing a serotype-independent, gamma-irradiated pneumococcal vaccine in a collaboration between the University of Adelaide and GPN Vaccines. This vaccine approach uses an unencapsulated strain of S. pneumoniae that has been engineered to improve safety and manufacturability, which is inactivated by exposure to sterilising doses of gamma radiation. We have previously reported that this vaccine elicits serotype-independent protective immune responses and functional antibodies in animals. The journey towards clinical stages of vaccine development, including engineering of the current vaccine candidate, large-scale cGMP vaccine manufacturing, and immunological data, will be presented.