Can the response to Covid-19 help address other global challenges?

Press/Media: Expert Comment

Description

One of the positives we’ll take from the pandemic is a new appreciation of what the scientific community can achieve to address a global crisis in such a short period of time. The response to COVID-19 showed new levels of international collaboration, information exchange, and technology transfer. We’ve managed to create and distribute multiple successful vaccines in the space of a year – a process that normally takes ten years from the initial discovery through to clinical trials and approval from regulators before manufacturing begins.

Subject

Lessons learned from Covid in addressing other global challenges

Period5 Nov 2021

Media coverage

1

Media coverage

  • TitleCan the response to Covid-19 help address other global challenges?
    Degree of recognitionInternational
    Media name/outletIn-Part
    Media typeWeb
    Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
    Date5/11/21
    DescriptionFrom the academic perspective, Dr Hamid Merchant, a pharmaceutical scientist and subject lead in pharmacy at the University of Huddersfield, agreed, adding that the pandemic has highlighted the importance of funding being provided at the earliest stage possible for new intervention development:

    If the venture capital funds are not coming in, if early support is not available in time, then lots of ideas and technologies emerging from universities go into open access immediately, which is good for sharing knowledge but this makes it so difficult later for the industry to exploit on the IP and commercialise it.”

    Support for academics with early investment and protections will be key for addressing major health challenges in the future, and hopefully we will see more venture capital playing a key role in philanthropic investments that can support the transition of technologies from an early idea to a commercial product.
    Producer/AuthorRuth Kirk
    URLhttps://in-part.com/blog/response-to-covid-19-address-other-global-challenges/
    PersonsHamid Merchant
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