On Mar. 30, 2020, the partners in the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator announced grants of $20 million to three institutions – the University of Washington, University of Oxford, and La Jolla Institute for Immunology – to fund clinical trials in order to identify highly potent immunotherapies for the COVID-19 pandemic.

These grants marked the first investments to come from the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, a large-scale initiative launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard to speed the development of and access to therapies for COVID-19. Currently, there are no broad-spectrum antivirals or immunotherapies available to prevent or treat COVID-19.