Thirteen drugmakers have teamed up to accelerate the development, manufacture and delivery of vaccines, diagnostics and treatments for COVID-19.
The companies have agreed to collaborate and share their proprietary molecular compounds with a COVID-19 therapeutic accelerator launched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"We feel a deep shared responsibility to see if there are specific areas where collaboration across the life sciences industry and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation can accelerate solutions to this pandemic," Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis and co-chair of the consortium said. "In addition to the individual contributions companies are already making, collective action is critical to ensure any promising studies into vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics are quickly scaled to people around the world who are affected by this pandemic."
The drugmakers involved in the consortium are:
- Novartis
- Boehringer Ingelheim
- Eli Lilly
- Gilead
- GlaxoSmithKline
- Johnson & Johnson
- Merck
- Merck KGaA (Germany's Merck)
- Pfizer
- Sanofi
- BD
- Eisai
- BioMerieux