BRUSSELS-Tuesday 18 August 2020 [ AETOS Wire ]-
CARE (Corona Accelerated R&D in Europe),
supported by Europe’s Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), is the
largest undertaking of its kind dedicated to discovering and developing
urgently needed treatment options for COVID-19.
-
The initiative is committed to a
long-term understanding of the disease and development of therapies for
COVID-19 and future coronavirus threats in addition to urgent efforts to
repurpose existing therapies as potential immediate response.
-
The CARE consortium will accelerate
COVID-19 R&D by bringing together the leading expertise and
projects of 37 teams from academic and non-profit research institutions
and pharmaceutical companies into a comprehensive drug discovery engine.
(BUSINESS WIRE) --
CARE (Corona Accelerated R&D in Europe) a new consortium supported
by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) public-private partnership
announced its launch today to accelerate the discovery and development
of urgently needed medicines to treat SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes
COVID-19. With a grant totaling € 77.7 million, CARE is funded by cash
contributions from the European Union (EU) and cash and in-kind
contributions from eleven European Federation of Pharmaceutical
Industries and Associations (EFPIA) companies and three IMI-Associated
Partners. CARE is a five-year project bringing together 37 partners from
Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland,
Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, and is led by VRI-Inserm (French
National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Paris, France),
Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of
Johnson & Johnson (Beerse, Belgium), and Takeda Pharmaceuticals
International AG, (Zurich, Switzerland). It integrates partners’
COVID-19 projects ongoing since February 2020.
“The
COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as the largest global health threat to
humanity in this century, requiring the global scientific community to
join forces in unprecedented ways,” said Professor Yves Lévy, Executive
Director of the VRI-Inserm and CARE coordinator. “Beyond the scientific
excellence of the different teams involved in this very ambitious
project, CARE is bringing together 37 partners in an alliance pooling
their expertise and know-how around an ambitious five-year work plan to
develop therapeutics against the current COVID-19 pandemic. We are very
grateful for the financial support provided by the Innovative Medicine
Initiative that will enable us to implement this plan.”
With
no licensed vaccines and only limited therapy options against COVID-19,
the pandemic is ongoing, counting more cases and deaths every day.
Uniting some of the most innovative and experienced scientists from all
relevant areas in a unique collaborative spirit CARE will maximize
synergies and complementarities with other initiatives such as the Gates
Foundation-supported COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, MANCO1, SCORE2, and the ECRAID3 network,
to accelerate the path to providing solutions for the current COVID-19
pandemic as well as future coronavirus outbreaks. After testing in the
laboratory, the project will advance the most promising drug candidates
to clinical trials in humans.
“We
are very excited to launch the CARE consortium and collaborate with
other leading experts to urgently identify new medicines against
SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses that may have the potential to cause
epidemics,” added CARE project leader Marnix Van Loock, Senior
Scientific Director and R&D Lead of Emerging Pathogens, Global
Public Health, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV. “As part of this initiative, we
look forward to applying learnings from an ongoing collaboration on
COVID-19 with the Rega Institute for Medical Research, part of KU
Leuven, to screen a drug repurposing library of thousands of existing
drug compounds.”
Kumar
Saikatendu, Ph.D., Director, Global Research Externalization, Takeda
said “It is humbling to see such a large collection of the best
scientific minds in Europe come together to solve this complex problem
with such urgency. COVID-19 is a once in a lifetime scientific challenge
for our generation. CARE aims to create effective therapies with a
positive safety profile for current and future coronaviral outbreaks. We
hope to move fast and have a meaningful impact in a timely manner.”
Comprehensive short- and long-term response to COVID-19
CARE
aims to create effective therapies with a positive safety profile for
the COVID-19 pandemic (drug repositioning), and develop new drugs and
antibodies specially designed to tackle the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The consortium builds on three pillars:
-
Drug repositioning, by screening and
profiling compound libraries contributed by partners with the aim of
rapidly progressing molecules to advanced stages of clinical testing.
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Small-molecule drug discovery based on in silico screening and profiling of candidate compounds directed against SARS-CoV-2 and future coronavirus targets.
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Virus neutralizing antibody discovery
using fully human phage and yeast display, immunisation of humanised
animal models, patient B cells and in silico design.
Closely
integrated with these pillars are work streams focusing on the
refinement of candidate compounds through a comprehensive medicinal
chemistry campaign, systems biology research and pre-clinical and
clinical evaluation of molecules from all three pillars. The systems
biology work package will investigate the viral pathophysiology to
increase our understanding of the interplay between virus infection
stages and human immune responses. It will identify disease markers, to
inform therapy development and improve clinical trial design and
monitoring of Phase 1 and 2 trials investigating new therapeutics
developed by CARE.
About CARE
CARE is a new public-private partnership bringing together scientists from academia, research centers, Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations
(EFPIA) member companies and IMI Associated Partners. In total, it
comprises 37 different partner organizations. Professor Yves Lévy from
VRI-Inserm is the academic coordinator, Marnix Van Loock from the
Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson is the EFPIA
project leader and Kumar Saikatendu from Takeda is the project
co-leader. The project partners are 11 academic institutions (KUL, GUF,
AMU, UzL UU, EDI-IVI, UHAM, UEDIN, TiHo, JU, LUMC), five public research
organisations (Inserm, CHUV, CEA, HZI, SERMAS) and 7 SMEs (IT, EVF,
EXSCI, NUVISAN, SCIFEON, ENYO, AIB), together with eleven EFPIA members
(Janssen, Takeda, Pfizer, ABBV, BI, Merck KgA, BAG, Novartis, Astellas,
Servier and AiCuris), and three IMI2 Associated Partners (BMGF, UNIVDUN,
GHDDI).*
About Boehringer IngelheimAbout the IMI
Acknowledgement
This
project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2
Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101005077. The JU
receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme, EFPIA, BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION, GLOBAL
HEALTH DRUG DISCOVERY INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE.
*Please click on the following link the List of partners: http://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/press-release/launch-care-consortium
1 Monoclonal Antibodies against 2019-New Coronavirus
2 Swift Coronavirus therapeutics Response
3 European Clinical Research Alliance on Infectious Diseases
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200817005736/en/
Contacts
Media Contacts:
For overarching questions re. CARE
Boehringer Ingelheim
Dr. Reinhard Malin
Head of Communications Innovation Unit
Boehringer Ingelheim Corporate Center GmbH
Media + PR
P: +49 6132 77-90815
reinhard.malin@boehringer-ingelheim.com
Linda Ruckel
Associate Director, Media and Corporate Reputation
Boehringer Ingelheim U.S.
Media + PR
P: +1 203-791-6672
linda.ruckel@boehringer-ingelheim.com
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