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.

In addition, newly announced funding from government and philanthropic donors has added to the Accelerator’s initial funding. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative committed $25 million and the U.K. government committed £40 million last week. The additional funds will allow the Accelerator to continue making grants to study repurposed drugs and investigate biological compounds for activity against COVID-19. More funding is needed to move promising therapies through development and scale-up.