Preparing for a pandemic: new models for financing innovation are needed

The German Agency for Disruptive Innovation has developed a new funding model for the development of broad-spectrum antivirals that can be rapidly deployed in future pandemics. This is a scheme aimed at bridging the gap between public health benefits and the financial attractiveness, for companies, of investing in R&D paths characterized by low returns on private investments.

Clean Industrial Deal and European Competitiveness Fund: the priorities of the von der Leyen bis

The German agency, SPRIN-D, was driven to study new funding models that allow the rapid and massive deployment of broad-spectrum antivirals, in case of new pandemics, by the lessons learned from Covid.

In addition to causing a very high number of human losses (estimated at over 27 million deaths), Covid was also an earthquake for the entire world economy, costing almost 14 trillion dollars in reduced economic output. Data that, combined with the Centre for Global Development's assessments predicting that future pandemics will be recurring events every 30 to 50 years (with an average number of deaths estimated at 2.5 million per year), impo