With the rapid proliferation of clinical trials addressing COVID-19, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) initiative, which could help speed up the delivery of therapeutics, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The ACTIV initiative is a public-private partnership effort to address the COVID-19 public health emergency and aims to make use of limited biomedical research resources in the most efficient way.

Keshalini Sabaratnam, PhD, Drugs Database Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “There are currently over 250 vaccines and 700 therapeutics in discovery to Phase III stages of development for COVID-19. There are over 250 clinical trials assessing hydroxychloroquine, with a high potential for duplicated effort there. With numerous vaccines and therapeutics in the pipeline, NIH’s ACTIV program aims to identify the most promising COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, over those with less potential, to accelerate their development and prevent duplication of clinical trials that can waste resources.”

The program has four focus areas, designed to: identify preclinical treatments, accelerate clinical testing of the most promising vaccines and treatments, improve clinical trial capacity and effectiveness, and accelerate the evaluation of vaccine candidates to enable rapid authorization or approval.

Sabaratnam concludes: “In spite of the swift and extraordinary response from numerous biopharmaceutical companies and researchers around the world, a coordinated and collaborative approach to streamline research efforts will be key in ensuring those promising vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic tests reach the global community fast to help bring the pandemic under control.”