• March 11, 2020
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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard launch initiative for COVID-19 treatments

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard today committed up to $125 million in seed funding to speed up the response to the COVID-19 epidemic by identifying, assessing, developing, and scaling up treatments. The partners are committed to equitable access, including making products available and affordable in low-resource settings.

The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will play a catalytic role by accelerating and 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. Currently, there are no broad-spectrum antivirals or immunotherapies available for the fight against emerging pathogens, and none approved for use on COVID-19.

The Gates Foundation and Wellcome are each contributing up to $50 million, and 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 $100 million commitment to the COVID-19 response announced last month.

“Viruses like COVID-19 spread rapidly, but the development of vaccines and treatments to stop them moves slowly. 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”, said Mark Suzman, chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will work with the World Health Organisation, government and private sector funders and organisations, as well as global regulatory and policy-setting institutions. The Accelerator will have an end-to-end focus, from drug pipeline development through manufacturing and scale up. By sharing research, coordinating investments, and pooling resources, these efforts can help to accelerate research. This kind of collaboration was a key lesson from the 2014 Ebola outbreak. By providing fast and flexible funding at key stages of the development process, the Accelerator will de-risk the pathway for new drugs and biologics for COVID-19 and future epidemic threats, ensuring access in lower-resource countries.

Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker