Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations field of work vaccine development
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a foundation that takes donations from public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations, to finance research projects which are not longer independent to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).CEPI is focused on the World Health Organization's (WHO) "blueprint priority diseases", which include: the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), the Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the Nipah virus, the Lassa fever virus, and the Rift Valley fever virus, as well as the Chikungunya virus and the hypothetical, unknown pathogen "Disease X". CEPI investment also requires "equitable access" to the vaccines during outbreaks, although subsequent CEPI policy changes may have compromised this criterion.CEPI was conceived in 2015 and formally launched in 2017 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.  It was co-founded and co-funded with US$460 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the governments of India and Norway, and was later joined by the European Union (2019) and the United Kingdom (2020). CEPI is headquartered in Oslo, Norway.SARS-CoV-2
In January 2020, CEPI funded three teams working on a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, being: Moderna, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, and the University of Queensland (UQ). By February 2020, Inovio announced that it had produced a pre-clinical DNA-based vaccination to fight COVID-19 at its lab in San Diego. Inovio collaborated with a Chinese firm to speed its acceptance by regulatory authorities in China for human trialing. The strategy of the UQ team is to develop a molecular clamp vaccine that genetically modifies viral proteins to make them mimic the coronavirus and stimulate an immune reaction.
In January 2020, CEPI announced a fourth SARS-CoV-2 project in a collaboration with their existing partner CureVac, to develop and manufacture a vaccine. CEPI's CEO, Richard J. Hachett said in an interview with the FT that CEPI expected to have human trials within 16 weeks, but cautioned "All these timelines are aggressive and aspirational. As circumstances unfold there may be opportunities to reduce the timing but it is critically important that any new vaccine is safe and effective".
In February 2020, Bloomberg News, citing virologists, identified CEPI as a "key player in the race to develop a vaccine"; a status other media outlets have attributed. In reviewing vaccine development on the virus Vox said: "CEPI is a large part of why there are already dozens of Covid-19 vaccine candidates making their way through animal and human trials, as well as platforms to develop more", while The Guardian said CEPI was "leading efforts to finance and coordinate Covid-19 vaccine development".
In March 2020, Hatchett gave an interview to Channel 4 News saying that "war is an appropriate analogy", for the steps needed to counter the virus, and that "this is the most frightening disease that I have ever encountered in my career, and that includes Ebola, it includes MERS, it includes SARS. And it's frightening because of the combination of infectiousness and a lethality that appears to be many-fold higher than flu". Hatchett told The Daily Telegraph that coronaviruses are the most serious threat to public health since the Spanish flu, and that a vaccine will take up to 18 months to deliver at a cost of £1.5 billion. CEPI said that its funds for fighting the virus would be fully allocated by the end of March and that it was launching a new funding call for US$2 billion to support fighting the virus.
In March 2020, CEPI invested US$4.4 million in two more projects with Swedish vaccine laboratory Novavax, and with Oxford University, bringing its total investment in SARS-CoV-2 vaccine work to US$23.7 million, and announcing that it would invest up to US$100 million in further COVID-19 projects.
In February 2021, CEPI launched the CIHR-CEPI Leadership Award for Excellence in Vaccine Research for Infectious Diseases of Epidemic Potential, co-administered with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
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