LIVE BLOG: R&D response to COVID-19 pandemic (Archived)

Sequencing the genomes of more than 24,000 samples of the SARS-CoV-2 virus taken from patients has shown most transmission into the UK came from elsewhere in Europe. The study found that the UK epidemic was composed of a large number of separate introduction events from inbound international travel, and then grew through local transmission within the UK.

The study detected 1,356 independent transmission lineages, based on analysis of genome and travel data up to 22 May 2020. The researchers, who are part of the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium set up with £20 million of government funding, say this is likely to be an underestimate of the actual number of virus introduction events that have resulted in onwards transmission, because as yet it has generated virus genome sequences for only a small fraction of UK infections.

The study found that early importations from Italy were, by early March, surpassed in number by importations from inbound travellers from Spain and France. The diversity of source locations also increased in March, with importations attributed to a growing range of countries. However, the contribution of China and other Asian countries to the number of importations was very small. The rate of virus importation peaked around 15 March.

Ireland’s Rapid Response Research, Development and Innovation programme set up to fund COVID-19 research, has awarded a further €1.4 million to 11 more projects, in a second round of funding. The winners include projects on remote blood pressure monitoring in pregnancy, the development of tests for antibodies, addressing supply chain challenges and computer modelling of the impact of the virus. This announcement builds on the previous investment of €3.5million across 26 projects.

Most of the registered clinical trials of potential treatments for COVID-19 underway as of late March are not designed in ways that will deliver reliable data, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, published in BMJ Open this week. The researchers analysed 201 clinical trials on the US website ClinicalTrials.gov and the international clinical trials registry maintained by the World Health Organisation. Many of the studies did not have control groups and patient and clinician blinding, and nearly one-third lacked clinical endpoints to clearly define success or failure. Nearly one-half were designed to enroll fewer than 100 patients, limiting their usefulness in assessing small treatment benefits.

The findings chime with concerns raised by Guido Rasi, director general of the European Medicines Agency, who last month told MEPs on the health committee that a lack of coordination and the small size of COVID-19 trials running in Europe means they are unlikely to deliver robust enough evidence to support regulatory approvals.

Since the March 26 cut-off of the Johns Hopkins study, the number of registered clinical trials has risen to more than 2,000.

Mainland Europe is to get its first quarantine facility for carrying out controlled human infection studies, after the Belgian government announced funding of €20 million for the project. The unit, to be set up in Antwerp, will be able to accommodate 30 healthy volunteers at a time. They will be vaccinated, or given a placebo injection, before being challenged with a viral infection. The facility will not be up and running until the start of 2022, but Pierre van Damme, vice dean of the University of Antwerp’s Faculty of Medicine, who is leading the project, believes it will be ready in time to play a part in the COVID-19 vaccine quest, and certainly in future epidemics. “Suppose there are three or four potential vaccines for COVID-19 by the end of 2021,” van Damme said. “We will then be able to rapidly determine how effective each of these candidates is.”

The UK National Institute for Health Research has launched a call for research looking at the long-term impacts of COVID-19, beyond the acute phase of the pandemic, to support recovery and learning for health and care services, and to mitigate the impact of any further waves of infection. There are two cut-off deadlines: 23 June and 14 July 2020. 

About 60 per of universities said they had online learning provisions in their strategic plans pre-COVID-19, but only a few were prepared for a quick shift to full online programmes the pandemic required, according to the latest U-Multirank data. The impact of COVID-19 on higher education has been tremendous, with all institutions and students having been affected. Many universities reacted in a flexible way to the crisis, but only one third were able to provide full online courses in some form. In engineering and science, the percentage of programmes that are available fully online is less than 3 per cent, while in subjects such as business studies it was 12 per cent, and economics 7 per cent. Furthermore, U-Multirank's data show the availability of interactive learning tools and digital exams is low, suggesting online support on a large scale proved to be difficult for many universities. 

These results, a first insight into online learning provisions at universities worldwide, includes a comprehensive data set of some 1,800 universities from 92 countries. “Universities all over the world appear to be caught by surprise by the COVID-19 crisis. Only few institutions appear to have had a risk management strategy in place that would allow them to respond to a pandemic,” said Frans van Vught, joint project-leader of U-Multirank.

The European Medicines Agency said it has received an application for conditional marketing authorisation (CMA) of the antiviral drug remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19 and has formally started its evaluation. The assessment of the benefits and risks of remdesivir, developed by US biotech Gilead Sciences, will be carried out under a reduced timeline and an opinion could be issued within weeks. If approved, the drug would be the first in Europe to be specifically labelled for the treatment of COVID-19. The drug has received emergency use approval from the US Food and Drug Administration and has been in use on a compassionate basis in EU countries during the pandemic. The short time frame for the CMA is possible because EMA has already looked at some data during a rolling review, which started on 30 April and was concluded on 15 May. EMA scientific committees and working parties operated in parallel to complete their assessment significantly faster, compared with the regular evaluation procedure.

Following the financial pledge made by prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, at the European-Commission led Global Coronavirus Response Summit pledging event on 4 May, the government of Greece has today formally announced an investment of €1.5 million in funding for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), to support efforts to accelerate the development of vaccines against COVID-19. “In our effort to face the pandemic, we realised that success lies in cooperation,” Mitsotakis said. “We decided to pledge €1.5 million to CEPI, which brings together partners from all around the world, in a joint effort to advance research for the development of vaccines against COVID-19, to the benefit of humanity as a whole. It is crucial that we develop a vaccine that will be accessible to all.”

The European Commission has announced a total of €314 million in awards to support 36 small companies working on projects directly addressing the control of COVID-19 and 36 other companies developing products that will support the recovery plan for Europe. The European Innovation Council is awarding €166 million from its SME funding instrument for projects including expanding the production of bio-decontamination wipes, developing monitoring systems to give healthcare workers feedback on the quality of ventilation they are administering to COVID-19 patients, and to develop antibodies to treat cases of severe infection.

A total of 139 companies which met the criteria for funding but did not win an award received the newly introduced COVID-19 seal of excellence, to help them in looking for alternative backers. The 36 companies that got funding from the recovery plan are working on projects including an organic fertiliser production system and the manufacture of stronger and taller wind turbine towers from wood. In this call, 679 applicants were awarded the seal of excellence.

The Hong Kong-based investment firm Morningside Ventures is backing the formation of a social enterprise, VacEquity Global Health, to take forward the clinical development and commercialisation of a COVID-19 vaccine being developed at Imperial College London. Imperial says the company has the objective of distributing an affordable vaccine in the UK and low- and middle-income countries, at cost-plus prices and no royalties. The RNA-based COVID-19 vaccine is due to begin a combined phase I/II clinical trial on 15 June. If positive, a further 6,000 people will be involved in the next trial in October.

In the past two months, the vaccines group at Imperial has received £41 million in government funding for the clinical studies. Morningside and Imperial also launched a separate company VaXEquity (VXT) to develop the self-amplifying RNA technology for other applications.