COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator

History

2020: Start

In the middle of March, 2020 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard decided to accelerate development of the technologies intended for identification, assessment, development and scaling of methods of treatment of epidemic of COVID-19. The accelerator was for this purpose created.

The new organization under the name COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will carry out the assessment of new medicines, means of multi-purpose therapy and biological medicines for treatment of patients with COVID-19 and other virus pathogens. Within this initiative three partners undertook the obligation "provide availability of these means, including make medicines available in the conditions of limited resources".

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard decided to accelerate development of the technologies intended for identification, assessment, development and scaling of methods of treatment of epidemic of COVID-19

Health care systems already experience difficulties: the analytical sets and potentially expensive medicines developed by the private industry are inaccessible for the population. The government agencies, it is entrusted to them to react to flash, lack resources for participation in such initiative, and they rely on the help of the private sector.

The direct purpose of a new accelerator is stimulation of assessment and development of new and multi-purpose drugs and biological products for treatment of patients with COVID-19. There are no antiviral medicines or immunotherapeutic broad-spectrum agents for fight against distribution of the new pathogenic microorganisms especially approved for use at COVID-19 yet.

The Geytsov fund and non-profit fund Wellcome entered up to $50 million to an accelerator. The new accelerator will work together with World Health Organization, public and private sector institutions and other organizations and also with regulating authorities. The accelerator will estimate potential new methods of treatment, to work with industry partners and to coordinate the actions with regulators for an output of medicines to the market.^[1]

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