Hav­ing made loud and clear its call for new re­search on vac­cines that can tack­le fu­ture pan­demics, the NIH is shed­ding light on some of the projects it’s fund­ing.

The Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Al­ler­gy and In­fec­tious Dis­eases (NI­AID) has award­ed around $36.3 mil­lion to three aca­d­e­m­ic groups that are work­ing on de­vel­op­ing “pan-coro­n­avirus vac­cines” — in­oc­u­la­tions that can pro­tect against a di­verse fam­i­ly of coro­n­avirus­es, es­pe­cial­ly the vo­ra­cious ones like SARS-CoV-2.

Among the three awards, sci­en­tists will use the fund­ing to de­sign and test vac­cine con­structs, as well as map out the full spec­trum of im­mune re­spons­es to coro­n­avirus­es (in­clud­ing SARS-CoV-2 vari­ants).

“These new awards are de­signed to look ahead and pre­pare for the next gen­er­a­tion of coro­n­avirus­es with pan­dem­ic po­ten­tial,” NI­AID di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Fau­ci said in a state­ment.

The NI­AID’s Di­vi­sion of Mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy and In­fec­tious Dis­eases and Di­vi­sion of Al­ler­gy, Im­munol­o­gy, and Trans­plan­ta­tion had put out an emer­gency awards no­tice of spe­cial in­ter­est back in No­vem­ber 2020 while many Covid-19 vac­cines were still un­der de­vel­op­ment. Be­sides, the agency added, vac­cines that can of­fer broad im­mu­ni­ty against dan­ger­ous pathogens like MERS and SARS are still sore­ly need­ed.

Of the three projects award­ed grants, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son team will be chas­ing a vac­cine can­di­date it calls Pan­Cor­Vac; the group from Brigham and Women’s Hos­pi­tal in Boston will aim to dis­cov­er durable pan-coro­n­avirus im­mu­ni­ty; and a crew out of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty will be test­ing its pan-be­ta­coro­n­avirus vac­cine.

All com­prise mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary tal­ent and will in­cor­po­rate re­search on “vi­rol­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy, im­muno­gen de­sign, and in­no­v­a­tive vac­cine and ad­ju­vant plat­forms and tech­nolo­gies,” the NIH added.

The NIH ex­pects to be hand­ing out an­oth­er batch of awards next year for the same pur­pose.

Bayer and Exscientia are winding down their three-year collaboration, leaving the big German pharma to take the AI-designed compounds born out of the pact further.

London-based Exscientia revealed in its Q2 update that the partners have “mutually agreed to end” their collaboration, which kicked off in early 2020, after recently achieving a drug discovery milestone. In an SEC filing, Exscientia said it terminated the pact on May 30, about six months early.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”