The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) have called on researchers and governments to develop a broader research strategy to help countries prepare for future pandemics.
The call comes after the Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit 2024, where the WHO Research and Development (R&D) Blueprint for Epidemics issued a report urging a broader-based approach by researchers and countries.
Calling on researchers and governments, they aim to accelerate and improve research to encompass entire families of pathogens that can infect humans, regardless of whether they pose a pandemic risk, as well as focusing on individual pathogens.
The approach, which aims to use prototype pathogens as guides to develop the knowledge base for entire pathogen families, will comprise broadly applicable knowledge, tools and countermeasures to be adapted to emerging threats, as well as speed up surveillance and research to further understand how pathogens transmit and infect humans and how the immune system responds to them.
Involving over 200 scientists from more than 50 countries who evaluated the science and evidence on 28 virus families and one core group of bacteria, encompassing 1,652 pathogens, the epidemic and pandemic risk were determined by considering available information on transmission patterns, virulence and the availability of diagnostic tests, vaccines and treatments.
Furthermore, WHO and CEPI have also called for globally coordinated, collaborative research to prepare for potential pandemics.
To support this, WHO is establishing a Collaborative Open Research Consortium, involving global research institutions, for each pathogen family, with a WHO Collaborating Centre acting as the research hub for each family, to promote greater research collaboration and equitable participation.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, commented: “We need… science and political resolve to come together as we prepare for the next pandemic. Advancing our knowledge of the many pathogens that surround us is a global project requiring the participation of scientists from every country.”
The call comes after WHO released an updated Bacterial Priority Pathogens List in May to provide guidance on the development of new and necessary treatments to combat global antimicrobial resistance, one of the top ten global public threats facing humanity.