Shaping a fairer response to future pandemics
Ensuring the fruits of scientific progress reach the most neglected
Scientific progress during the COVID-19 pandemic delivered vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments at record speed, but solidarity faltered when it came to sharing those breakthroughs. The consequences for countries and communities shut out from timely access to new health tools was devastating.
From our start, DNDi teams and allies have been driven by a clear-cut purpose: making sure the most neglected are not forgotten. Today, we are harnessing our partnerships in antiviral drug discovery and speaking out on lessons and proof points from our two decades of scientific collaboration to make equity a guiding principle – and not an afterthought – in future pandemics.
Getting new treatments ready for clinical trials before the next pandemic hits
Our drug discovery researchers and partners remain laser-focused on utilizing AI, open science, and cutting-edge tools to develop broad-spectrum antiviral drug candidates ready for clinical evaluation and manufacturing at scale when the next pandemic strikes.
Working with the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) and partners, the Nucleoside Booster project enabled coordinated testing of over 20 late-stage nucleoside-based drugs across multiple viral families. Leveraging a shared platform of screening centres and research institutes, partners rapidly generated critical data that has allowed us to narrow our focus to four promising compounds with broad-spectrum antiviral activity.
Together with the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI) in India, DNDi also began optimization of the TMEM16F series – a collection of novel salicylamide derivatives – working to improve their physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties to boost their ability to prevent viruses from entering human cells and using cell machinery to replicate.
Our teams continued work with our global network of partners in the AViDD-ASAP consortium – including Diamond Light Source, MedChemica, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, PostEra, Stanford University, and others – to advance a portfolio of broad-spectrum antiviral compounds. A series targeting Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV) and related coronaviruses was prioritized for pre-clinical evaluation, including our frontrunning molecule, ASAP-0017445.
A model molecule
DNDi and our partners publicly disclosed the structure of our pre-clinical candidate ASAP-0017445 in early 2025 in accordance with the AViDD-ASAP Policy on Intellectual Property Management and Open Science Disclosure. Funding permitting, the promising new broad-spectrum antiviral compound is now poised to advance to clinical trials based on pre-clinical evidence of its potent activity against multiple viruses within the coronavirus family.
The significance of ASAP-0017445 lies not only in its potential to become a life-saving antiviral drug for future pandemics – it also represents a new model for how innovation can be advanced, shared, protected, and ultimately delivered to patients around the world.
The compound’s origins trace back to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when DNDi joined with structural and medicinal chemists, virologists, and data scientists from around the globe to design new antiviral molecules through open, not-for-profit collaboration in the COVID Moonshot consortium. This work gave rise to a suite of promising drug candidates that helped lay the foundation for the AViDD-ASAP programme.
To ensure that ASAP-0017445 can be developed without compromising future affordability or equitable access, our teams and partners adopted a special approach to managing intellectual property (IP). To ensure control of the compound’s development and global equitable access, we filed a ‘minimally defensive, maximally permissive’ patent – a legal strategy designed to prevent misuse of the compound by third parties and oblige commitments to nonexclusive manufacturing and global access terms for any future licensee granted rights to produce and market the drug. Together with early disclosure of the compound’s structure, this safeguards against the filing of secondary IP that could block access to the drug and ensures that multiple manufacturers can produce it at an affordable, sustainable price.
For 20 years, DNDi has embedded access conditions at the earliest stage possible, including drug discovery – long before a new medicine reaches the market. The ASAP patent serves as a blueprint for how patents can be used not to limit, but to enable, equitable access.
Getting the rules right
An estimated 1.3 million lives lost due to COVID-19 could have been saved in the first year of vaccine roll-out alone if vaccines were distributed equitably. This staggering failure is a stark representation of the profound consequences of systemic inequities in global health that DNDi has worked to address for more than two decades.
The pandemic laid bare the consequences of failing to tie public funding for medical R&D to equitable access to resulting vaccines, tests, and treatments. Without enforceable conditions, governments that invest in R&D for life-saving health tools may be unable to ensure they are successfully developed and made available for their populations and all who need them.
At the Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit in Rio de Janeiro in July 2024 and through engagement with policymakers at national levels throughout the year, we reiterated our call to embed access into the foundations of pandemic R&D. This included continued work with partners that helped ensure robust conditions for access planning are included in the US National Institutes of Health’s new Intramural Research Program Access Planning Policy, released in early 2025.
DNDi Policy Advocacy Director Michelle Childs addresses the 12th meeting of the International Negotiating Body for the WHO Pandemic Agreement at WHO headquarters in Geneva in December 2024.
Together with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and other civil society partners, DNDi has engaged in extensive consultations with Member States negotiating the WHO Pandemic Agreement since 2022. Our teams focused particular effort on securing support for Article 9.5 – a key provision that can help put public interest at the heart of how health tools are developed, funded, and shared. The Pandemic Agreement was adopted at the World Health Assembly in May 2025, and Article 9.5 makes it the first international health agreement to explicitly acknowledge the critical need for governments to leverage the power of public funding to ensure equity in access and innovation. While the agreement reflects compromise and not all ambitions were met, it represents important progress and lays the groundwork for action towards global readiness and equity in future health emergencies. DNDi will continue to consult with Member States on implementation of the agreement and advocate for ambitious national-level policies that translate their commitments into meaningful impact.
More 2024 highlights:
Photo credits: Yaw Afrim Gyebi-DNDi; WHO/Violaine Martin
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