- The Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard are funding $125 million in total to companies developing treatments for the novel coronavirus.
- The organizations said Tuesday that the funding would be poured in for a COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator to speed-up the R&D to the COVID-19 epidemic and slow down the spread.
- Bill Gates has been buzzing the alarm on the COVID-19 coronavirus, calling it a "pandemic," although the WHO has yet to give it that distinction.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is partnering with Wellcome and Mastercard to create the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, a $125 million initiative to help find potential solutions for the infection of coronavirus and future threats.
To create treatments for COVID-19, the project will draw together the World Health Organization, pharmaceutical companies, research businesses, government, and other philanthropic organizations.
There are no vaccines currently available to prevent the deadly disease that has killed more than 4,000 people and infected more than 113,000 around the world. Researchers say the production of a COVID-19 vaccine would take at least one year.
According to a statement from the Gates Foundation, the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will test new and repurposed medications and biologics to treat patients with COVID-19 in the immediate term, and other potential viral pathogens.
The three parties committed as part of the program, to "equitable access including making products available and affordable in low-resource situations."
That is a problem right now as healthcare systems are grappling with access to test kits and potentially high-cost treatments produced by the private sector. Apparently, the government agencies charged with responding to the epidemic lack the resources to participate in such an effort and rely on the private sector to help.
The short-term aim for the new accelerator is to catalyze the identification and development of new and repurposed drugs and biologics for treating COVID-19 patients.
The accelerator is aimed at "speeding up R&D and slowing the spread," Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said. It will have an end-to-end emphasis, from the production of the drug supply to the scale-up. The collaborators will review new and repurposed medications as well as biologics.
"The only way to treat a viral infection like COVID-19 is through antiviral medication," Suzman wrote in a blog post. "Right now, we can only treat the symptoms because there are actually no antiviral medications that can cure a range of conditions just like antibiotics do for bacterial infections.
The Seattle-based Gates Foundation is contributing $50 million to the accelerator; it's part of the foundation's $100 million toward the global response to COVID-19 earlier. Wellcome, a medical charity based in London, has also raised $50 million while Mastercard donated $25 million.
The cross-disciplinary approach has been one of the lessons learned for the Gates Foundation from its approach to combating the 2014 Ebola epidemic.
The accelerator will run as a joint effort, and will follow three different strategies, according to a statement from the foundation. It will identify drugs and possible new medicines, collaborate with collaborators in the industry and cooperate with regulators to market medications.