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Fast Grants

Fast Grants is an American charity created to provide rapid grants for research related to COVID-19.

It was administered through Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.1) 2)

History

Fast Grants was founded in early April 2020 by George Mason University professor Tyler Cohen, Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, and University of California Berkeley bioengineer Patrick Hsu.3) The program received 4,000 applications in its first week,4) and in less than a month, had “awarded $18 million to more than 100 researchers working on projects including several potential vaccines and treatments for COVID-19.”

Organization

Personnel

Name Position Notes
Tyler Cohen Co-founder George Mason University
Patrick Collison Co-founder Stripe
Patrick Hsu Co-founder University of California Berkeley

Donors

Donors to Fast Grants include:5) 6)

Activities

Recipients

Recipients of grant funding from Fast Grants include:7)

Name Affiliation Project
- Addgene For continuing to share critical reagents with researchers at minimal cost during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Patricia Aguilar University of Texas For modeling age-dependent susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection in 3D human lung organoids.
Hector Aguilar-Carreno Cornell University To use a novel viral membrane inhibitor to produce a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine
Wataru Akahata Kyoto University For the development of a Covid-19 vaccine specificially targeted to the receptor-binding domain of the viral S protein using expertise gained during successful development of anti-malaria and anti-chikungunya vaccines.
James Antaki Cornell University For the collaborative effort with Accel Diagnostics to develop a point of care serological test for rapid quantification of antibody titer to monitor disease progression and strength of immune response.
Susan Athey Stanford University For retrospective analyses designed to assess the benefit of off-label drug use, in order to help prioritize and guide subsequent randomized clinical trials.
Michael Barry Mayo Clinic For the development of a single-cycle adenovirus vaccine and viral decoy against SARS-CoV-2.
Mark Bathe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) For a collaborative effort with the Lingwood and Schmidt labs combining vaccine immunology and nanotechnology expertise to rapidly test and characterize COVID-19 vaccine candidates in high-throughput.
John Bell Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) To create multiple vaccines for COVID-19 using novel strategies for delivering coronavirus proteins directly to the critical cells required to generate an effective immune response.
Carolyn Bertozzi Stanford University For a collaboration of Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi, Dr. Catherine Blish and Dr. Marie Hollenhorst to identify minimally invasive predictive biomarkers for Covid-19 disease progression to improve scarce resource allocation.
Lbachir BenMohamed University of California Irvine For the development of an asymptomatic multi-epitope COVID-19 vaccine.
Catherine Blish Stanford University To determine best practices for N95 mask decontamination that will sufficiently inactivate virus and allow mask reuse in a clinical setting
Jeff Biernaskie University of Calgary To study the immune basis of COVID-19 related acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDs) via longitudinal study of patients undergoing placebo and convalescent plasma treatment in order to inform evidence-based repurposing of targeted immunotherapies to improve outcomes for critically-ill patients affected by COVID-19.
Pamela Bjorkman California Institute of Technology For electron tomography imaging of SARS-CoV-2 virions trapped in the act of fusion by novel fusion inhibitors
Jim Boonyaratanakornkit Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center To probe the human B cell repertoire for SARS-CoV-2-protective B cells from pre-immune individuals in order to guide vaccine and monoclonal antibody design against COVID-19.
Gillian Booth University of Toronto To accelerate the CONNECT study (COVID-19 and diabetes: Clinical Outcomes and Navigated NEtwork Care Today) to define the relationship between diabetes and adverse COVID-19 outcomes and improve care for individuals with diabetes.
Stephen Brohawn University of California Berkeley To develop novel COVID-19 therapeutics that target coronavirus ion channels in collaboration with the Bautista and Adesnik labs.
James Brian Byrd University of Michigan Medical School To support a randomized, controlled clinical trial testing whether continuation, or discontinuation of two common types of blood pressure medication leads to better outcomes in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
Ann Chahroudi Emory University School of Medicine To investigate cross-reactive, cross-neutralizing, and antibody-dependent enhancing (ADE) antibodies of circulating endemic coronaviruses.
Amy Chung University of Melbourne
Susan Daniel Cornell University
Brandon DeKosky University of Kansas
Shokrollah Elahi University of Alberta
John Eikelboom McMaster University
Barbara Engelhardt Princeton University
Joaquin Espinosa University of Colorado
Laura Esserman University of San Francisco
Tracy Fisher Tulane University
Steven Marc Friedman University Health Network (UHN), University of Toronto
Judith Frydman Stanford University
Patrick Giguère University of Ottawa
Amy Gladfelter University of North Carolina
Douglas Goetz Ohio University
Anne Goldfeld Boston Children's Hospital
Ewan Goligher University Health Network (UHN), University of Manitoba
Brigitte Gomperts University of California Los Angeles
Lisa Gralinski University of North Carolina
Nathan Grubaugh Yale School of Public Health
Jeremy Hirota McMaster University
Shirley Hsin-Ju Mei Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Eva Harris University of California Berkeley
John Higgins Massachusetts General Hospital
Krystalyn Hudson Columbia University
Patrick Hsu University of California Berkeley
Akiko Iwasaki Yale University
Smita Iyer University of California Davis
Benjamin Izar Columbia University
Peter Jackson Stanford University School of Medicine
Jingyue Ju Columbia University
Naftali Kaminski Yale University
Kevin Kain University Health Network (UHN)
Yoshihiro Kawaoka University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine
Michael Kay University of Utah
Nevan Krogan University of California San Francisco
Ronald Levy Stanford University
Michael Lin Stanford University
Mark Looney University of California San Francisco
Hiten Madhani University of California San Francisco
Jonathan Maguire University of Toronto
Rajeev Malhotra Massachusetts General Hospital
Amanda Martinot Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
Grant McFadden Arizona State University
Allison McGeer Sinai Health System
Roman Melnyk University of Toronto, SickKids
Miriam Merad Mount Sinai Medical Center
Edward Mills McMaster University
Keith Mastov University of California San Francisco
Elke Muhlberger Boston University
Anders Näär University of California Berkeley
Mihai Netea Radboud University Medical Center
Daniel Nomura University of California Berkeley
Paul Norman University of Colorado
- Center for Open Science
Elizabeth Ogburn Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Melanie Ott University of California San Francisco
Chul Park University of Toronto
Jerry Pelletier McGill University
Bradley Pentelute Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Marion Pepper University of Washington
Nikolai Petrovsky Flinders University
Rosalind Picard Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Dylan Pillai University of Calgary
Hidde Ploegh Harvard University
Angela Rasmussen Columbia University
Brian Raught University Health Network
Jeffrey Rawetch Rockefeller University
Charles Rice Rockefeller University
Davide Robbiani Rockefeller University
Erica Ollmann Saphire La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Ansuman Satpathy Stanford University
Jacqueline Saw Vancouver General Hospital (VGH)
Julia Schaletzky University of California Berkeley
Katherine Seley-Radtke University of Maryland
Timothy Sheahan University of North Carolina
Sachdev Sidhu University of Toronto
Matthew Spitzer University of California San Francisco
Sarah Stanley University of California Berkeley
Erec Stebbins German Cancer Research Center
Alice Ting Stanford University
Alain Townsend University of Oxford
David Veesler University of Washington
Kliment Verba University of California San Francisco
Bert Vogelstein Johns Hopkins University
Arthur Wallace University of California San Francisco, San Francisco VA Medical Center
Bruce Wang University of California San Francisco
Taia Wang Stanford University
Tania Watts University of Toronto
Kipp Weiskopf Whitehead Institute
Craig Wilen Yale University
Paul Yager University of Washington
Michael Yin Columbia University
Qian Zhang Rockefeller University
1) , 3) , 5)
Hobson, W. (2020, April 29). Scientists wait months for coronavirus research grants. This economist is trying to fix that. Washington Post. http://archive.today/2020.04.30-192113/https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/scientists-wait-months-for-coronavirus-research-grants-this-economist-is-trying-to-fix-that/2020/04/29/b5c8a3e0-896e-11ea-9dfd-990f9dcc71fc_story.html
2) , 6) , 7)
Home. Fast Grants. Retrieved December 23, 2021, from http://archive.today/2021.12.23-005332/https://fastgrants.org/
4)
Else, H. (2021). COVID “Fast Grants” sped up pandemic science. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02111-7