- The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced it committed $25 million to a research fund focused on developing treatments for COVID-19
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) — which is a philanthropic organization founded by husband and wife team Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan — announced it has committed $25 million to a research fund focused on developing treatments for COVID-19, a disease caused by the coronavirus.
The CZI is specifically donating $20 million to the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator. The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator program has $125 million in commitments from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard. And the other $5 million will be available for “future needs.”
The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator is going to work with the World Health Organization along with health organizations in the public and private sectors.
Key Quotes:
“We’re excited to partner with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard to help the biomedical research community quickly identify, develop, and test treatments for COVID-19,” said CZI co-founders and co-CEOs Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg. “The Therapeutics Accelerator will enable researchers to quickly determine whether or not existing drugs have a potential benefit against COVID-19. We hope these coordinated efforts will help stop the spread of COVID-19 as well as provide shared, reusable strategies to respond to future pandemics.”
“In joining the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, we’re taking part in a coordinated response that will help address this outbreak, and future outbreaks as well,” said CZI Head of Science Cori Bargmann. “By working together, we can dramatically accelerate drug development and deployment to find the effective therapeutics that will ultimately save lives.”
The CZI and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub is already working with health organizations to increase the availability of COVID-19 tests. And the CZI is working with the University of California, San Francisco to support at least 1,000 tests per day soon.
Here is a post that CZI published shortly after the announcement:
