COMMENTARY: Collaboration and Coordination: The Name of the Game for Finding Possible Treatments and Vaccines for COVID-19

By Eleanor Frederick, MSc, MPH

A public-private partnership which involves U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), other U.S. government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, biotechs and the non-profit organization – Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) aims to identify “an international strategy” for COVID-19 research. However, as stated by Francis Collins NIH director, “it is primarily a United States focused effort.”

“COVID-19 is the most significant global health challenge of our lifetime, and it will take all of us working together as a global community to put an end to this pandemic”, said Paul Stoffels, M.D., Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer, Johnson & Johnson. “We will need to harness the best ideas from multiple stakeholders, including governments, regulatory authorities, academia, NGOs and industry to stop COVID-19. At Johnson & Johnson, we are committed to working closely with FNIH, IMI and are part of other important consortia to speed solutions to stop this pandemic.”

The main initiative is Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Intervention and Vaccines (ACTIV). It aims to make efficient use of NIH funding and its clinical trial networks by working with companies to evaluate data on early candidates, selecting those that have the most promise and are not already part of rigorous human tests.

NIH says it is stepping in because of concerns that some potential treatments such as hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine are being touted by some researchers as being effective based on poorly designed trials. NIH is assembling working groups of scientist who will inventory drugs and vaccines at different stages of development and then decide which are most promising for future testing and not already being investigated in well designed studies.

The researchers will also decide which agent will be able to move quickly into human trials and can be manufactured in large quantities. The top-rated compounds will get priority for the US $1.8 billion Congress gave NIH for COVID-19 research as part of the pandemic recovery bills and preferred access to NIH’s dozen or more clinical trial networks.

Francis Collins, NIH director noted that once ACTIV has started to coordinate clinical trials it might be easier to rapidly start, end or redesign trials to focus on the most promising candidate. He noted how quickly 800 patients were recruited to test the drug Remdesivir which is manufactured by Gilead Sciences (results from this drug are expected soon).

The NIH project joins numerous other COVID-19 research coordination efforts around the world. Representatives from various trials are represented in the NIH working group to avoid duplications. In the United Kingdom (UK), for example, the RECOVERY trial is led by University of Oxford and involves more than 1,000 patients and 132 hospitals and is run by National Health Service (NHS). Other studies currently being conducted involves the collaboration of different pharmaceutical companies such as the global trial called the SOLIDARITY study organized by the World Health Organization (WHO)

According to Mikael Dolsten, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and President, Worldwide Research, Development and Medical of Pfizer Inc., “battling the COVID-19 pandemic is far too great a challenge for any one company or institution to solve alone.” He continues, “We are seeing an unprecedented level of collaboration across the innovation ecosystem to address this global health crisis, and this potentially powerful NIH initiative may allow us to further accelerate the delivery of much needed therapies to patients around the world.” 

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