The coronavirus pandemic is forcing biopharma companies and regulators to act quicker than they ever have to speed treatments to approval. And that, in turn, is leading to creative collaborations rarely seen before.
Some examples are already in place. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome, for instance, joined with regulators, non-governmental organizations and drugmakers in March to form the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator. More than a dozen pharmaceutical companies and biotechs, and a few venture firms, recently created the "COVID R&D" consortium. Large rivals are joining forces on individual projects, too, like Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline's plan to co-develop a coronavirus vaccine, or Takeda and CSL Behring's joint work on a plasma-derived therapy for COVID-19.
Image: https://www.biopharmadive.com - Lydia Polimeni, National Institutes of Health
