No­vo Nordisk, Gates Foun­da­tion pledge $90M to fund an­tivi­ral re­search for the next pan­dem­ic

When the next pan­dem­ic hits, the No­vo Nordisk Foun­da­tion, Open Phil­an­thropy and the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion don’t want the world to be scram­bling to de­vel­op oral an­tivi­ral drugs — or poor coun­tries to be strug­gling to ac­cess them.

That’s why the three char­i­ty groups are pool­ing to­geth­er $90 mil­lion to fund a new ini­tia­tive called Pan­dem­ic An­tivi­ral Dis­cov­ery, or PAD.

The goal is sim­ple: to help re­searchers iden­ti­fy and de­vel­op Phase II-ready an­tivi­ral can­di­dates tar­get­ing “pan­dem­ic threat virus­es, in­clud­ing coro­n­avirus­es, paramyx­ovirus­es, and or­thomyx­ovirus­es.”

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