The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding a new initiative dedicated to identifying, assessing, developing, and scaling-up treatments for Covid-19 virus.
Global (12 March 2020) – To date, there are no broad-spectrum antivirals or immunotherapies available for the fight against emerging pathogens, and none approved for use on COVID-19 but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding a new initiative, that will hopefully speed up the process.
The newly-formulated COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator is funded by The Gates Foundation as well as the London-based research charity Wellcome, and Mastercard (pushing the funding up to $125-million).
The Gates Foundation and Wellcome are each contributing up to $50 million, while the Mastercard Impact Fund has committed up to $25 million to catalyse the initial work of the accelerator. The Gates Foundation’s funding is part of its up to $100 million commitment to the COVID-19 response announced last month.
The Covid-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will play a role in evaluating new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients with COVID-19 in the immediate term, and other viral pathogens in the longer-term. This means that when the next global virus hits, they will hopefully be more prepared.
The money will be used to fund the public health sector as well as provide protective measures in Africa to at-risk populations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation work within many African countries and can use their established network to provide specialised aid to the countries at risk.
“Viruses like COVID-19 spread rapidly, but the development of vaccines and treatments to stop them moves slowly,” said Mark Suzman, chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“If we want to make the world safe from outbreaks like COVID-19, particularly for those most vulnerable, then we need to find a way to make research and development move faster. That requires governments, private enterprise, and philanthropic organizations to act quickly to fund R&D.”
Working in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), government and private sector funders and organisations, as well as the global regulatory and policy-setting institutions, the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator can speed up the process. The collaboration includes sharing research, coordinating investments, and pooling resources. By working together, more lives can be saved.
In their press statement, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation confirmed the Accelerator would also approach private pharmaceutical companies to access their extensive libraries.
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Dear Tired Humans, You’re Actually Doing Okay!‘To identify candidate compounds, the Accelerator will take a three-pronged approach: testing approved drugs for activity against COVID-19, screening libraries of thousands of compounds with confirmed safety data, and considering new investigational compounds and monoclonal antibodies. Drugs or monoclonal antibodies that pass initial screening would then be developed by an industry partner.
The biotech and pharmaceutical industries will be critical partners, bringing their compound libraries and clinical data to the collaboration and lending commercialisation and other expertise that will be required to scale up successful drugs and monoclonal antibodies. In parallel to the development of the COVID-19 drug pipeline, the Accelerator will work with regulators to align criteria and develop manufacturing capacity with industry. An accelerated pathway to bringing effective treatments to patients is around one year for products that have current regulatory approval or candidates with existing clinical data. The timeline would be longer for compounds further upstream in the pipeline that has limited existing clinical data.’
“Science is moving at a phenomenal pace against COVID-19, but to get ahead of this epidemic we need greater investment and to ensure research co-ordination. The Therapeutics Accelerator will allow us to do this for potential treatments with support for research, development, assessment, and manufacturing.
“COVID-19 is an extremely challenging virus, but we’ve proved that through collaborating across borders we can tackle emerging infectious diseases,” he added. “We must strive to strengthen efforts in the face of COVID-19, and in doing so, continue to make sure advances are accessible and affordable to all. Investing now, at scale, at risk and as a collective global effort is vital if we are to change the course of this epidemic. We welcome others to join us in this effort.” – Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome
While antiviral drugs are approved to lessen the severity of seasonal flu and treat HIV, among other viral diseases, none have demonstrated efficacy against the current epidemic. One reason for the lack of effective treatments is that products may not have an immediate market, which can slow or prevent their research and commercial development.
The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator is designed to combat this. Hopefully, through this initiative, a solution and treatment will be found.
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