The ongoing mpox outbreak highlights the urgent need to develop effective therapeutics for endemic and pandemic diseases. There is a need for greater investment and coordination for end-to-end therapeutics development of priority diseases, and equitable access through the value chain must be central to this.
This PloS Global Public Health opinion piece makes the case for a global Therapeutics Development Coalition to address the gaps and challenges in development.
The coalition would foster collaboration between existing partners (early-stage developers, international organisations, industry, civil-society, academia and governments) in order to:
- Invigorate the therapeutics pipeline to build the pipeline of anti-viral candidates for priority endemic and pandemic diseases.
- Develop platform technologies to enable faster development of therapeutics.
- Establish pre-agreed pathways for clinical trial pathways, regulation, manufacturing, and procurement processes.
- Foster sustainable and coordinated investment throughout the therapeutics pipeline.
The proposed coalition would align with ongoing work on WHO’s R&D for priority viral families, coordination mechanism for equitable access to medical countermeasures (iMCMNet), and efforts to strengthen the clinical trial ecosystem.
Read the article here: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0003654