According to an April 17, 2020 press release, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH) are bringing together more than a dozen leading biopharmaceutical companies, the Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the European Medicines Agency to develop an international strategy for a coordinated research response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The planned “Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV)” partnership will develop a collaborative framework for prioritizing vaccine and drug candidates, streamlining clinical trials, coordinating regulatory processes, and/or leveraging assets among all partners to rapidly respond to the COVID-19 and future pandemics. This is part of the whole-of-government, whole-of-America response that the Administration has led to beat COVID-19. “We need to bring the full power of the biomedical research enterprise to bear on this crisis,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins (photo), MD, PhD. “Now is the time to come together with unassailable objectivity to swiftly advance the development of the most promising vaccine and therapeutic candidates that can help end the COVID-19 global pandemic.” Coordinated by the FNIH, ACTIV government and industry partners will provide infrastructure, subject matter expertise and/or funding (both new and in-kind) to identify, prioritize, and facilitate the entry of some of the most promising candidates into clinical trials.Login Or Register To Read Full Story