The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with Wellcome and Mastercard, have set up a $125m seed fund for the accelerated identification and development of treatments for the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19.
The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will focus on identifying, assessing, developing and scaling-up potential treatments for the virus, which has now taken a foothold in an increasing number of countries across the world.
The Gates Foundation and Wellcome will commit $50m to the initiative, while the Mastercard Impact Fund will provide up to $25m to expedite the work of the accelerator.
“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 organisations to act quickly to fund R&D,” he added.
The accelerator will work with the World Health Organization (WHO), governments and private sector funders and organisations, as well as global regulatory and policy-setting institutions.
The aim is to share research, coordinate investment and pool resources to help fast-track research into potential therapeutics for COVID-19.
Moreover, the accelerator will take a ‘three-pronged’ approach to identify candidates; firstly it will test approved drugs for activity against COVID-19; secondly, it will screen libraries which contain thousands of compounds with confirmed safety data; and lastly, it will examine new investigational compounds and monoclonal antibodies.
A number of vaccines for the novel coronavirus are already being developed by a range of drugmakers, including Sanofi, GSK and Moderna.
Moderna has sent the first batch of its investigational COVID-19 vaccine to the US National Institute of Health (NIH) for phase 1 testing.
Sanofi’s work on a potential vaccine has also been fast-tracked by the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
The French drugmaker is tapping into its earlier work on the SARS virus – another type of coronavirus that caused an epidemic back in 2002.
Johnson and Johnson’s Janssen division has also partnered with BARDA to accelerate the development of a possible vaccine candidate, as part of a ‘multi-prolonged’ approach which also includes the screening of antiviral molecules for activity against COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Gilead’s investigational antiviral drug remdesivir is currently being testing in clinical trials in the US and China to determine its efficacy against the virus.