Global coalition inks pacts to find cure for coronavirus

MUMBAI: The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has announced that it will fund three companies working on different pathways to fight the new strain of coronavirus which has put authorities on alert worldwide after it was first reported in China earlier this month.

Agreements for this were signed with two US-based companies — Inovio and Moderna-and the University of Queensland in Australia.

This comes within weeks of the outbreak of respiratory infection due to the virus--named 2019-nCoV--being reported from Wuhan province in China. The pacts were signed in record time in an attempt to not repeat the mistake of slow action during the Ebola crisis, Gagandeep Kang, vice chairperson of CEPI, told ET on Friday.

“If we are talking about new vaccines being developed, we have to start work on it as soon as we have sequence of the virus. And in 2019, we have the sequence now,” said Kang, who is also the executive director of Translational Health Science and Technology Institute.

Kang is hopeful that research can help develop a vaccine in four months from the start of an epidemic and subsequently keep reducing the time of developing new treatments for infectious diseases. She said she hopes that there will be lessons learnt that will allow public health organisations to get a treatment out faster.

The two US-based companies and research by the university are offering hope that a vaccine to treat the coronavirus will be developed.

While the research is at an early stage, Kang is hoping that a treatment will be available soon. Approval for the Ebola vaccine came just a year ago after drug companies MSD and Johnson and Johnson took forward university research to bring the vaccine into the market.

Illness due to the new coronavirus is currently being treated with repurposed drugs or antivirals. But this may not be enough, experts say. Kang said that a project by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) that looked at humanised monoclonal antibodies to treat the Nipah virus could possibly be replicated to treat coronavirus, too.