CEPI and WHO are calling for a broader research strategy for countries to prepare for the next pandemic

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the World Health Organization (WHO) today called on researchers and governments to strengthen and accelerate global research to prepare for the next pandemic.

They emphasized the importance of expanding research to include entire families of pathogens that can infect humans—regardless of their perceived pandemic risk—as well as focusing on individual pathogens. The approach proposes the use of pathogen prototypes as guides or trackers to develop a knowledge base for entire pathogen families.

At the 2024 Global Summit on Pandemic Preparedness held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the WHO R&D Blueprint for Epidemics issued report encouraging wider access by researchers and countries. This approach aims to create broadly applicable knowledge, tools and countermeasures that can be rapidly adapted to emerging threats. This strategy also aims to accelerate surveillance and research to understand how pathogens are transmitted and infect humans and how the immune system responds to them.

The report's authors compared his updated recommendation to imagining scientists as individuals looking for lost keys on the street (the next cause of the pandemic). The area illuminated by street lighting represents well-studied pathogens with known pandemic potential. By researching prototype pathogens, we can expand the lit area, gaining knowledge and understanding of pathogen families that may currently be in the dark. The dark spaces in this metaphor include many areas of the world, particularly resource-scarce and high-biodiversity environments, that are still under-monitored and under-studied. These sites may harbor new pathogens, but lack the infrastructure and resources to conduct comprehensive research.

“The WHO Scientific Framework for Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness Research is a vital change in the way the world approaches countermeasure development, and CEPI strongly supports it. As presented at the 2024 Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this framework will help guide and coordinate research on entire pathogen families, a strategy that aims to strengthen the world's ability to rapidly respond to unforeseen variant, emerging pathogens , the spread of zoonoses, and unknown threats called pathogen X,” he said Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI.

The prioritization work underpinning the report involved more than 200 scientists from more than 50 countries, who assessed the science and evidence on 28 families of viruses and one major group of bacteria, including 1,652 pathogens. Epidemic and pandemic risk is determined by taking into account available information on transmission patterns, virulence, and the availability of diagnostic tests, vaccines, and treatments.

CEPI and WHO also called for globally coordinated, collaborative research to prepare for potential pandemics.

“History teaches us that the next pandemic is a matter of when, not if. It also teaches us the importance of science and political determination in blunting its influence,” he said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We need the same combination of science and political determination to come together as we prepare for the next pandemic. Advancing our knowledge of the many pathogens that surround us is a global project that requires the participation of scientists from every country.”

To facilitate this, WHO is engaging research institutions worldwide to establish a Collaborative Open Research Consortium (CORC) for each pathogen family, with WHO Collaborating Center acting as a research center for each family.

These worldwide CORCs will include researchers, developers, funders, regulators, testing experts and others, with the goal of promoting greater research collaboration and equal participation, especially from places where pathogens are known to circulate or are likely to circulate .