Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a supra-governmental organization based in Oslo, Norway. It operates as a public-private partnership, soliciting donations from governments, corporations, charities, foundations and individuals to finance research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).
CEPI operates out of three offices across Oslo, London and Washington, D.C.
History
Formation
In July 2015, a paper outlining an idea for a new global funding mechanism for vaccine development was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) written by Jeremy Farrar, Stanley Plotkin and Adel Mahmoud.1) Their concept was further expanded at the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where it was discussed as a solution to the problems encountered in developing and distributing a vaccine for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic.2)
CEPI was officially launched on January 18, 2017 at the WEF, funded by initial donations of $100 million each from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust, with an additional $260 million pledged by a coalition of the governments of Germany, Japan and Norway.3) The government of India also served as a co-founder, contributing funding at a later date.4)
Additional Funding
In January 2022, Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged an additional $150 million each to CEPI.5)
Organization
Personnel
Joint Coordination Group
The Joint Coordination Group (JCG) is made up of organizations with an interest in the development and deployment of vaccines through CEPI's activities. Its members include:
- African Vaccine Regulatory Forum (AVAREF)
- Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
Funding
To date, CEPI has secured financial support from Australia, Austria, Belgium, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Canada, Denmark, the European Commission, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, United Kingdom, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and Wellcome Trust.
CEPI has also received support from private sector entities as well as public contributions through the United Nations Foundation's COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.
As of July 2022, CEPI has received $2.3 billion USD from governments and $282.35 million from private investors, for a total of $2.6 billion. An additional $1.28 billion has been pledged for future donation.
| Private investors10) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Name | Contributions (USD) | Pledges (USD) |
| Avast | $8,000,000 | - |
| Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | $121,400,000 | $154,000,000 |
| Fidelity | $1,490,000 | - |
| Goldman Sachs | $1,630,000 | - |
| Nestlé | $1,040,000 | - |
| Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation | $1,140,000 | - |
| Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | $3,500,000 | - |
| COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund | $10,000,000 | - |
| Wellcome Trust | $130,900,000 | $150,000,000 |
| Others (less than $1 million) | $3,240,000 | - |
Activities
Research
CEPI and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research co-administer the CIHR-CEPI Leadership Award for Excellence in Vaccine Research for Infectious Diseases of Epidemic Potential.11)
Portfolio
CEPI's vaccine portfolio includes:12)
| Company | Description | CEPI funding | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| SK Bioscience | Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccine | Up to $50 million USD | Nanoparticle vaccine platform (preclinical) |
| SK Bioscience | COVID-19 | Up to $210 million USD | Recombinant protein (approved for use in South Korea) |
| Codiak Biosciences | Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccine | Up to $2.5 million USD | exoVACC platform (preclinical) |
| Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), California Institute of Technology, University of Oxford, Ingenza | Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccine | Up to $30 million USD | Mosaic-8 nanoparticle (preclinical) |
| Bharat Biotech, University of Sydney, ExcellGene | Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccine | Up to $12.5 million USD | Modified trimeric spike (preclinical) |
| MigVax | Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccine | Up to $4.3 million USD | Subunit vaccine tablet (preclinical) |
| Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) | Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccine | Up to $5 million USD | Protein subunit technology (preclinical) |
| Affinivax | Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccine | Up to $4.5 million USD | Multiple Antigen Presenting System (MAPS) technology (preclinical) |
| Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), Panacea Biotec | Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccine | Up to $12.5 million USD | Nanoparticle vaccine platform (preclinical) |
| BioNet | Broadly protective coronavirus vaccine | Up to $16.9 million USD | Nucleic acid (preclinical) |
| DIOSynVax | Broadly protective coronavirus vaccine | Up to $42 million USD | Nucleic acid (preclinical) |
| NEC Corporation | Broadly protective coronavirus vaccine | Up to $4.8 million USD | Nucleic acid (preclinical) |
| Gritstone bio | COVID-19 | Up to $25.6 million USD | Phase 1 |
| Shanghai Zerun Biotechnology | COVID-19 | Up to $25.1 million USD (funding discontinued) | Chimeric protein vaccine (Phase 1) |
| VBI Vaccines | COVID-19 | Up to $33 million USD | Enveloped virus like particle (eVLP) (Phase 1) |
| Biological E. Limited | COVID-19 | Up to $5 million USD | Protein antigen (approved in India) |
| International Vaccine Institute, Bharat Biotech | Chikungunya | Up to $14.1 million USD | Inactivated whole virion vaccine (Phase 2/3) |
| Auro Vaccines, PATH | Nipah virus | Up to $25 million USD | HeV-sG-V vaccine (Phase 1) |
| Clover Biopharmaceuticals | COVID-19 | Up to $397.4 million USD | S-Trimer vaccine (Phase 2/3) |
| Pasteur Institute, Themis Bioscience, University of Pittsburgh | COVID-19 | Up to $4.9 million USD | Measles vector (development discontinued) |
| University of Hong Kong | COVID-19 | Up to $5.4 million USD | Live attenuated vaccine (Phase 1) |
| Novavax | COVID-19 | Up to $399 million USD | Recombinant protein nanoparticle technology (Phase 3) |
| University of Oxford, AstraZeneca | COVID-19 | Up to $384 million USD | ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (Phase 3) |
| University of Queensland | COVID-19 | Up to $4.5 million USD (funding discontinued) | Recombinant protein (development discontinued) |
| University of Queensland | MERS coronavirus | Up to $10.6 million USD | Recombinant protein (preclinical) |
| Moderna | COVID-19 | Up to $1 million USD | Nucleic acid (Phase 3) |
| Inovio Pharmaceuticals | COVID-19 | Up to $22.5 million USD | Nucleic acid (Phase 2/3) |
| Inovio Pharmaceuticals | Lassa virus | Up to $56 million USD (joint funding with Inovio's MERS vaccine) | Nucleic acid (Phase 1) |
| Inovio Pharmaceuticals | MERS coronavirus | - | Nucleic acid (Phase 2) |
| CureVac | COVID-19 | Up to $15.3 million USD | Nucleic acid (development discontinued) |
| CureVac | Lassa virus | Up to $34 million USD | Nucleic acid (preclinical) |
| Public Health Vaccines | Nipah virus | Up to $43.6 million USD | Recombinant viral vector (Phase 1) |
| Valneva | Chikungunya | Up to $23.4 million USD | Live attenuated vaccine (Phase 3) |
| Colorado State University | Rift Valley Fever | Up to $9.5 million USD | Live attenuated vaccine (preclinical) |
| Emergent BioSolutions, PATH | Lassa virus | Up to $36 million USD | Recombinant viral vector (Phase 1) |
| Wageningen Bioveterinary Research | Rift Valley Fever | Up to $12.5 million USD | Live attenuated vaccine (preclinical) |
| University of Tokyo | Nipah virus | Up to $31 million USD | Recombinant viral vector (preclinical) |
| International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) | Lassa virus | Up to $64.4 million USD | Recombinant viral vector (Phase 1) |
| Themis Bioscience | Lassa virus | Up to $37.5 million USD (joint funding with Themis' MERS vaccine) | Recombinant viral vector (Phase 1) |
| Themis Bioscience | MERS coronavirus | - | Recombinant viral vector (preclinical) |
| Themis Bioscience | Chikungunya | Up to $21 million USD | Recombinant viral vector (preparing for Phase 3) |
| IDT Biologika | MERS coronavirus | Up to $36 million USD | Recombinant viral vector (preclinical) |
| Janssen, University of Oxford | Lassa virus | Up to $19 million USD for Janssen's Lassa, MERS, Nipah vaccines | Recombinant viral vector (preclinical) |
| Janssen, University of Oxford | MERS coronavirus | - | Recombinant viral vector (preclinical) |
| Janssen, University of Oxford | Nipah virus | - | Recombinant viral vector (preclinical) |
| Imperial College London | Marburg virus | Up to $8.4 million USD | Nucleic acid (preclinical) |
External links
1)
Plotkin, S. A., Mahmoud, A. A. F., & Farrar, J. (2015). Establishing a Global Vaccine-Development Fund. New England Journal of Medicine, 373(4), 297–300. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmp1506820
2)
CEPI officially launched. (2017, January 18). CEPI. https://archive.ph/genb4
3)
Solberg, E. (2017, January 20). $460 Million Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation Launched. Philanthropy News Digest. https://web.archive.org/web/20220112055033/https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/460-million-coalition-for-epidemic-preparedness-innovation-launched
4)
Paton, J. (2017, January 18). Ebola, Zika Push Drugmakers Into Effort to Avert Pandemics. Bloomberg. https://web.archive.org/web/20221020002146/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/ebola-zika-push-drugmakers-to-join-effort-to-avert-pandemics
5)
Wellcome, Gates pledge $300 million to prevent future epidemics. (2022, January 20). Philanthropy News Digest. https://web.archive.org/web/20220120223745/https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/wellcome-gates-pledge-300-million-to-prevent-future-epidemics
6)
Who we are. CEPI. Retrieved October 19, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20221019165747/https://cepi.net/about/whoweare/
7)
Astrid Helgeland. LinkedIn. Retrieved October 19, 2022, from www.linkedin.com/in/astrid-helgeland-a9778239/
8)
Magnus Holme. LinkedIn. Retrieved October 19, 2022, from https://www.linkedin.com/in/magnus-holme-18537110/
9)
Reopen DC Co-Chair | Nicole Lurie. Government of the District of Columbia. Retrieved October 20, 2022, from https://archive.ph/4t2xQ
10)
Investment Overview. (2022). CEPI. https://web.archive.org/web/20220829190949/https://cepi.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2022_07_06-CEPI-Investment-Overview.pdf
11)
Canadian Institutes of Health Research. (2021, January 18). Pre-announcement: CIHR-CEPI Leadership Award for Excellence in Vaccine Research for Infectious Diseases of Epidemic Potential - CIHR. Government of Canada. https://archive.ph/viORE
12)
Our portfolio. CEPI. Retrieved October 21, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20221021070613/https://cepi.net/research_dev/our-portfolio/