Billions boost next-generation COVID-19 vaccine and treatments

Six months after announcing the $5 billion Project NextGen to develop treatments and vaccines that can “stay ahead of COVID-19,” the U.S. government has awarded 20 contracts that reveal what much of that sum will support. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on 13 October that up to $1.2 billion will go to three vaccine developers aiming to develop better shots, adding to another $1 billion already awarded to companies that will test them in yearlong, 10,000-person clinical trials. Another half-billion will support development of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that can block SARS-CoV-2 infection. Project NextGen is far from the all-hands-on-deck effort of the $18 billion Operation Warp Speed, launched in May 2020, that led to the first COVID-19 vaccines in record time. But Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, says the program could “improve upon existing COVID vaccines and treatments [and] lead to discoveries that can help in our fight against other infectious diseases.” Others say it will do too little to prepare the world for the next pandemic. “The worst thing we could do is leave people with the sense that this is going to be the solution to the future,” says Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota who was on a steering group of researchers that wrote a detailed R&D roadmap for vaccines that could protect against many cor...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research