Abbreviation | CEPI |
---|---|
Formation | January 2017 |
Founders | |
Founded at | Davos, Switzerland [3] |
Purpose | Fund vaccine development [3] |
Headquarters | Oslo, Norway |
Locations | |
Chief executive | Richard J. Hatchett |
Key people | Jane Halton (Chair) |
Staff (2020) | 68 [4] |
Website | CEPI.net |
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a foundation that takes donations from public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations, to finance independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID). [4] [5]
CEPI is focused on the World Health Organization's (WHO) "blueprint priority diseases", which include: the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), the Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the Nipah virus, the Lassa fever virus, and the Rift Valley fever virus, as well as the Chikungunya virus and the hypothetical, unknown pathogen "Disease X". [6] [5] CEPI investment also requires "equitable access" to the vaccines during outbreaks, although subsequent CEPI policy changes may have compromised this criterion. [7] In 2022, CEPI adopted a vision for the world to be able to respond to a pandemic threat with a new vaccine within 100 days. [8]
CEPI was conceived in 2015 and formally launched in 2017 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. It was co-founded and co-funded with US$460 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, [3] and the governments of India and Norway, and was later joined by the European Union (2019) and the United Kingdom (2020). [3] [5] CEPI is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. [4]
The concept for CEPI was outlined in a July 2015 paper in The New England Journal of Medicine , titled "Establishing a Global Vaccine-Development Fund", co-authored by British medical researcher Jeremy Farrar (a director of Wellcome Trust), American physician Stanley A. Plotkin (co-discoverer of the Rubella vaccine), and American expert in infectious diseases Adel Mahmoud (developer of the HPV vaccine and rotavirus vaccine). [9] [10]
Their concept was further expanded at the 2016 WEF in Davos, where it was discussed as a solution to the problems encountered in developing and distributing a vaccine for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic. [3] Co-founder and funder, Bill Gates said: "The market is not going to solve this problem because epidemics do not come along very often — and when they do you are not allowed to charge some huge premium price for the tools involved". [3] CEPI's creation was also supported and co-funded by the pharmaceutical industry including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), with CEO Sir Andrew Witty explaining at the WEF, "It is super-disruptive when the red phone rings in our vaccine division because of a health emergency. People do not realise that there's no spare capacity in the world's vaccine production system today". [3]
CEPI was formally launched at the 2017 WEF in Davos, with an initial investment of US$460 million by a consortium that included the governments of Norway, Japan, and Germany, The Wellcome Trust, and the Gates Foundation; [11] [3] India joined a short time afterwards. [12] [13] In a launch interview with the Financial Times (FT), Gates said that a key goal was to reduce the time to develop vaccines from 10 years to less than 12 months. [3]
The initial targets were the six EID viruses with known potential to cause major epidemics, being: MERS, Lassa fever, Nipah virus, Ebola, Marburg fever and Zika. [3] [5] The FT reported CEPI would "build the scientific and technological infrastructure for developing vaccines quickly against pathogens that emerge from nowhere to cause a global health crisis, such as Sars in 2002/03 and Zika in 2015/16", and fund research papers on the costs and process of vaccine development. [3] Town & Country listed it as one of the top-10 newsworthy moments from the 2017 Davos. [14] At launch, Norwegian physician John-Arne Røttingen, who led the steering committee for Ebola vaccine trials, served as interim CEO, and CEPI was based at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. [9]
In April 2017, Richard J. Hatchett, former director of the U.S. government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), became the full-time CEO. [15] Hatchett was also a member of the United States Homeland Security Council under George W. Bush, and the United States National Security Council, under Barack Obama. [16] [17] Also in April 2017, CEPI opened an additional office in London, and in October 2017, a further office was opened in Washington, D.C. [18] Nature later stated, "It is by far the largest vaccine development initiative ever against viruses that are potential epidemic threats". [19]
In 2020, CEPI was identified by several media outlets as a "key player in the race to develop a vaccine" for coronavirus disease 2019. [4] [20] [16]
At its launch in 2017, CEPI announced five-year financial pledges from its founders that amounted to US$460 million and came from the sovereign governments of Japan (US$125 million), Norway (US$120 million), and Germany (US$10.6 million in 2017 alone, and which later became US$90 million), and from global foundations of the Gates Foundation (US$100 million), and the Wellcome Trust (US$100 million); India was finalising their financial commitment, which was made shortly afterward. [21] A funding target of US$1 billion was set for the first 5 years of operation (i.e. by January 2022). [21] The journal Nature said of the amount raised that: "It is by far the largest vaccine development initiative ever against viruses that are potential epidemic threats". [19]
As part of its funding structure, CEPI has used "vaccine bonds" to "frontload" multi-year sovereign funding pledges. In 2019, the International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm) issued NOK 600 million in vaccine bonds to front-load the commitment by Norway, through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to CEPI. [22] [23]
In March 2019, the European Commission granted access to CEPI into the EU's Horizon 2020 programme, and a longer-term financial funding programme. [24] CEPI note presentations that the EU's financial commitment amounts to US$200 million, which when added to the seed amount (including the full German commitment), came to US$740 million. [25]
By February 2020, Bloomberg News reported that CEPI had raised a total of US$760 million with additional donations from the governments of Australia, Belgium, Canada, and the U.K. [4] Bloomberg said that "CEPI solves what economists call a 'coordination problem'. It can help pair boutique research and development companies with big vaccine manufacturers, work with regulators to streamline approval processes and resolve patent disputes on the spot. Its scientific advisory committee has executives from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical, among others". [4]
In March 2020, the British government pledged £210 million in funding to CEPI to specifically focus on a vaccine for the coronavirus; making Britain CEPI's largest individual donor. [26] [27]
In January 2022, The Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $300 million to CEPI. [28] This is part of CEPI's effort to enable the world to reduce vaccine development timelines to 100 days.
Contributor | Category | Value million USD |
---|---|---|
Norway | Common Pool | 81.7 |
Germany | Common Pool | 39.3 |
Japan | Common Pool | 25.0 |
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | Common Pool | 20.0 |
EU | Chik & RVF | 18.4 |
UK | Common Pool | 13.0 |
Canada | Common Pool | 7.5 |
EU | Ebola | 3.7 |
Vulcan Inc. | Ebola | 2.5 |
Australia | Common Pool | 0.7 |
Wellcome Trust | Common Pool | 0.1 |
Currency adjustment | −0.9 | |
Total | 211.0 |
The founding mission of CEPI was "equitable access" in pandemics: selling vaccines to developing nations at affordable prices. [7] Affordable access to existing patented vaccines had long been a concern for the medical community, and concern mounted in the wake of the struggle to get access to vaccine in the 2013–2016 Ebola epidemic. [30] [7] Averting a repetition of this crisis was the motivating factor behind founding CEPI. [10]
CEPI's original policy [31] contained specific measures to prevent some of these market problems. All vaccine-manufacturing contracts would need initial approval by a public review board. The policy also stated that vaccine prices would be set at levels affordable to those needing vaccines and sustainable to the manufacturer. [32] Trade secrets would not be funded by the CEPI. Companies had to share all research data developed with CEPI funds. While CEPI would, controversially, not retain and license the intellectual property developed with CEPI funds (allowing the groups awarded funding to own it), [33] the CEPI retained "step-in" rights: the right to license and use intellectual property developed with CEPI funds for vaccine production, even if the company that had received the funding and taken ownership of the IP later withdrew from the agreement with CEPI. [7] The original policy also required that funded parties pre-register any trials in a clinical trials registry, publish results within a year of study completion (except with compelling reason and permission of CEPI), publish results in open-access articles, and have mechanisms for securely sharing underlying data and results, including negative results, in a way that preserves trial volunteer privacy (see AllTrials for further information). [33]
Pharmaceutical corporations, including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Takeda, objected to the original policy, and these provisions were removed in December 2018, [34] [7] after the CEPI had obtained significant funding. [35] The policy changes met with strong criticism, led by Médecins Sans Frontières. [36] [37] CEPI was also criticized for not following its own policies on transparency, and for removing the requirement that CEPI's board review CEPI's contracts. [33] [38] [37]
The CEPI stated that its vaccines would continue to be affordable and available, [4] and published an article discussing the changes, saying that the old policy "while reflective of the idealism that inspired the creation of CEPI, was felt by others not to be pragmatic or reflect the business realities confronted by vaccine developers". [32] It said that several unnamed vaccine manufacturers had declared that they could not work with the CEPI under the original policy. It said that the policy change did not reflect a change in commitment to access, and CEPI would still retain the right to do research and development using intellectual property it had funded, if the old partner was unable to continue. It also said that the CEPI would retain the right to find a new manufacturer if the old manufacturer could not continue, provided the old manufacturer agrees to the transfer of the information and intellectual property to the new one. [32]
The New York Times said that CEPI had made a "failed effort to get large pharmaceutical firms to agree to be partners without insisting on substantial profits or proprietary rights to research that CEPI helped to finance and produce," and had replaced specific implementation measures with lip service to its funding mission. [7]
The coalition was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian MP Carl-Erik Grimstad. [39] [40]
CEPI is incorporated under Norwegian law. As of March 2020, [41] [5] a full-time staff of 68 [4] that runs the organisation under the direction of a chief executive officer, Richard Hatchett. [41]
In October 2018, CEPI scientists estimated that the costs of developing at least one vaccine for each of the diseases that could escalate into global humanitarian crises was between US$2.8 billion and US$3.7 billion. [42] In November 2019, CEPI discussed its target portfolio was on the WHO's "blueprint priority diseases", that included: MERS-CoV, Nipah virus, Lassa fever virus, and Rift Valley fever virus, as well as Chikungunya virus, and the WHO's Disease X. [6] CEPI outlined its projects to update CEPI priorities for establishment of technical and regulatory pathways for vaccine development, develop sustainable manufacturing solutions for vaccine candidates nearing completion, and create investigatory stockpiles of its vaccine candidates for use in emergency situations. [5]
Monkeypox
Lassa fever, also known as Lassa hemorrhagic fever, is a type of viral hemorrhagic fever caused by the Lassa virus. Many of those infected by the virus do not develop symptoms. When symptoms occur they typically include fever, weakness, headaches, vomiting, and muscle pains. Less commonly there may be bleeding from the mouth or gastrointestinal tract. The risk of death once infected is about one percent and frequently occurs within two weeks of the onset of symptoms. Of those who survive, about a quarter have hearing loss, which improves within three months in about half of these cases.
A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide.
CureVac N.V. is a German biopharmaceutical company. It develops therapies based on messenger RNA (mRNA). Headquartered in Tübingen, Germany, the company was founded in 2000 by Ingmar Hoerr (CEO), Steve Pascolo (CSO), Florian von der Mulbe (COO), Günther Jung, and Hans-Georg Rammensee. CureVac has had approximately 375 employees since May 2018.
Sir Jeremy James Farrar is a British medical researcher who has served as Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization since 2023. He was previously the director of The Wellcome Trust from 2013 to 2023 and a professor of tropical medicine at the University of Oxford.
Novavax, Inc. is an American biotechnology company based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, that develops vaccines to counter serious infectious diseases. Prior to 2020, company scientists developed experimental vaccines for influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), as well as Ebola and other emerging infectious diseases. During 2020, the company redirected its efforts to focus on development and approval of its NVX-CoV2373 vaccine for COVID-19.
Disease X is a placeholder name that was adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2018 on their shortlist of blueprint priority diseases to represent a hypothetical, unknown pathogen that could cause a future epidemic. The WHO adopted the placeholder name to ensure that their planning was sufficiently flexible to adapt to an unknown pathogen. Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci stated that the concept of Disease X would encourage WHO projects to focus their research efforts on entire classes of viruses, instead of just individual strains, thus improving WHO capability to respond to unforeseen strains. In 2020, experts, including some of the WHO's own expert advisors, speculated that COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus strain, met the requirements to be the first Disease X.
Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is an American biotechnology company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of synthetic DNA products for treating cancers and infectious diseases. In April 2020, Inovio was among some 100 companies, academic centers, or research organizations developing a vaccine candidate for treating people infected with COVID-19, with more than 170 total vaccine candidates in development.
Richard Hatchett is an American oncologist and epidemiologist who has been serving as chief executive officer of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in Oslo and London since 2017. He was awarded the Secretary of Health and Human Services's Award for Distinguished Service.
Michael Joseph Ryan is an Irish epidemiologist and former trauma surgeon, specialising in infectious disease and public health. He is executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, leading the team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19. Ryan has held leadership positions and has worked on various outbreak response teams in the field to eradicate the spread of diseases including bacillary dysentery, cholera, Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Marburg virus disease, measles, meningitis, relapsing fever, Rift Valley fever, SARS, and Shigellosis.
Planning and preparing for pandemics has happened in countries and international organizations. The World Health Organization writes recommendations and guidelines, though there is no sustained mechanism to review countries' preparedness for epidemics and their rapid response abilities. National action depends on national governments. In 2005–2006, before the 2009 swine flu pandemic and during the decade following it, the governments in the United States, France, UK, and others managed strategic health equipment stocks, but they often reduced stocks after the 2009 pandemic in order to reduce costs.
The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, or the Global Collaboration to Accelerate the Development, Production and Equitable Access to New COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, is a G20 initiative announced by pro-tem Chair Mohammed al-Jadaan on 24 April 2020. A call to action was published simultaneously by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 24 April. As of January 2022, it was the largest international effort to achieve equitable access to COVID-19 health technologies.
Vaccine development and production is economically complex and prone to market failure. Many of the diseases most demanding a vaccine, including HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, exist principally in poor countries. Pharmaceutical firms and biotechnology companies have little incentive to develop vaccines for these diseases because there is little revenue potential. Even in more affluent countries, financial returns are usually minimal and the financial and other risks are great.
Rick Arthur Bright is an American immunologist, vaccine researcher, and public health official. He was the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) from 2016 to 2020. In May 2020, he filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging that the Trump administration ignored his early warnings about the COVID-19 pandemic and illegally retaliated against him by ousting him from his role and demoting him to a position at the National Institutes of Health. On October 6, 2020, Bright resigned from the government. On November 9 he was named a member of President-elect Joe Biden's coronavirus advisory board.
A human challenge study, also called a challenge trial or controlled human infection model (CHIM), is a type of clinical trial for a vaccine or other pharmaceutical involving the intentional exposure of the test subject to the condition tested. Human challenge studies may be ethically controversial because they involve exposing test subjects to dangers beyond those posed by potential side effects of the substance being tested. Controlled human infection studies are also used to study viruses and immune responses.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was isolated in late 2019. Its genetic sequence was published on 11 January 2020, triggering an urgent international response to prepare for an outbreak and hasten the development of a preventive COVID-19 vaccine. Since 2020, vaccine development has been expedited via unprecedented collaboration in the multinational pharmaceutical industry and between governments. By June 2020, tens of billions of dollars were invested by corporations, governments, international health organizations, and university research groups to develop dozens of vaccine candidates and prepare for global vaccination programs to immunize against COVID‑19 infection. According to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the geographic distribution of COVID‑19 vaccine development shows North American entities to have about 40% of the activity, compared to 30% in Asia and Australia, 26% in Europe, and a few projects in South America and Africa.
The European Vaccine Initiative (EVI) is a non-profit Product Development Partnership (PDP) with the goal of supporting and accelerating the development of effective and affordable vaccines for global health. Since its inception in 1998, EVI has operated as an independent non-profit organisation that works closely with academic researchers, the private sector, governments, and other organisations to spearhead vaccine development. Headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, EVI collaborates with partners across the world to pursue its mission.
Inovio COVID-19 vaccine is a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by Inovio Pharmaceuticals.
202-CoV is a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by Shanghai Zerun Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Walvax Biotech. It is one of several candidates under development by Walvax.
A universal coronavirus vaccine, also known as a pan-coronavirus vaccine, is a theoretical coronavirus vaccine that would be effective against all coronavirus strains. A universal vaccine would provide protection against coronavirus strains that have caused disease in humans, such as SARS-CoV-2, while also providing protection against future coronavirus strains. Such a vaccine has been proposed to prevent or mitigate future coronavirus epidemics and pandemics.
Gary P. Kobinger is a Canadian immunologist and virologist who is currently the director at the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas. He has held previous professorships at Université Laval, the University of Manitoba, and the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, he was the chief of the Special Pathogens Unit at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for eight years. Kobinger is known for his critical role in the development of both an effective Ebola vaccine and treatment. His work focuses on the development and evaluation of new vaccine platforms and immunological treatments against emerging and re-emerging viruses that are dangerous to human health.
CEPI is a direct response to calls from four independent expert reports into the Ebola epidemic for a new system for stimulating the development of vaccines against epidemic threats. It was founded by the governments of India and Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and the World Economic Forum, which has played a key convening role, bringing together stakeholders at the 2016 Davos meeting and other events.
Billion-dollar programme aims to cut vaccine-development time from 12 years to one
Drug companies on CEPI's scientific advisory panel, including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Japan's Takeda, pushed back. CEPI mostly capitulated in a December 2018 two-page declaration in which it jettisoned specifics but gave lip service to its founding mission of "equitable access to these vaccines for affected populations during outbreaks."
"The speed with which we have [produced these candidates] builds very much on the investment in understanding how to develop vaccines for other coronaviruses", says Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Oslo-based nonprofit the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), which is leading efforts to finance and coordinate Covid-19 vaccine development.
Under the just-approved arrangement, IFFIm will, on CEPI's behalf, issue bonds on international capital markets supported by new pledges from the Kingdom of Norway, which hosts CEPI. Norway and CEPI have turned to IFFIm because of its simplicity, speed of execution, cost, compliance and strong reputation among investors.
Knowing there will be more Ebola-like emergencies in need of ready vaccines was the starting point for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, a public-private partnership that launched in 2017. Their raison d'être: to award grants for swift vaccine development targeting emerging threats that the pharmaceutical industry might otherwise ignore.
Dr. Richard Hatchett advised the Bush and Obama White Houses and worked for the agency that protects Americans against pandemics and bioweapons.