Broad-spectrum Antivirals

Led by Jano Costard at SPRIND, advised by Christopher Avery (HKS)

Developing an advanced portfolio of viral therapeutics is a key pandemic preparedness measure to reduce the severity and mortality of a future pandemic. However, commercial markets do not adequately value the social benefit of an antiviral being “broad-spectrum” such that it could be deployed rapidly in response to a future novel pathogen. Pull mechanisms would be able to specify a target product profile that prioritizes drug attributes that have a high public health value such as broad-spectrum efficacy and the ability to reduce transmission. Having these antivirals ready for use against a novel pathogen with little to no modification would allow for faster deployment during a future pandemic, saving lives and reducing economic losses.

Read the policy memo and watch the pitch

Antimicrobial Resistance: Diagnostics

Led by Akhil Bansal, MD at AMR Funding Circle, advised by David McAdams (Duke)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is responsible for over a million annual global deaths and is a growing biosecurity threat. With the expected burden from AMR reaching 10 million deaths by 2050, innovations that are able to slow the growth of resistance could save millions of lives and billions of dollars in healthcare costs. New diagnostic tests are needed to reduce the overuse and misuse of antimicrobials by equipping providers with better decision-making tools and enhancing surveillance capabilities. Diagnostic innovations would lead to global public benefits of improved antibiotic conservation, slower development of resistance, and longer antibiotic lifespans, but this wedge between the private and social benefits results in inadequate investment. Pull funding would help close this gap to incentivize researchers and biotech companies to prioritize investments in novel diagnostics, encourage competition between potential developers, and ensure accessible pricing to promote broad access and adoption.

Read the policy memo and watch the pitch.

Repurposing Generic Drugs

Led by Beth Boyer at Duke Margolis

Drugs and other medical innovations often have uses beyond their original intended purposes. However, firms have little financial incentive to research these novel, but socially valuable uses because firms cannot enforce patents on new uses for off-patent drugs. This may have played out during COVID: research suggests that, for COVID, pharmaceutical corporations were much less likely to sponsor research on repurposing drugs with generic competitors. Pull mechanisms are capable of addressing this problem because they can incentivize investment to achieve well-defined health outcomes. Funders can target these funding mechanisms to fight future pandemics (e.g., to produce antivirals) and, also, to address other health conditions, more broadly.

Read the policy memos: US Common Diseases and Neglected Tropical Diseases and watch the pitch