Long hailed as the “crown jewel” of the U.S. government’s biomedical research division, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is partnering with Johnson and Johnson for a coordinated, team-based effort to find measures with meaningful impact on the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
In a May 18, 2020, blog post, NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, and Johnson and Johnson Vice Chair of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels, MD, outlined each team’s goals.
The Preclinical Working Group is charged with standardizing and sharing preclinical evaluation resources and methods and accelerating the tests of potential therapies and vaccines before they enter clinical trials.
The Therapeutics Clinical Working Group will prioritize and accelerate the clinical evaluation of therapeutic candidates for COVID-19 with near-term potential.
The Clinical Trial Capacity Working Group is tasked with assembling and coordinating existing clinical trial networks to increase efficiency and build capacity to test potential therapies and vaccines for COVID-19.
The Vaccines Working Group will focus on accelerating evaluation of vaccine candidates for rapid authorization or approval.
“To address what may be the greatest public health crisis of this generation, it is imperative that all sectors of society work together in unprecedented ways, with unprecedented speed,” Collins and Stoffels wrote in a May 18, 2020, JAMA article.