Melbourne announces the creation of a center for accelerated research into new treatments

On Wednesday August 31, the Australian University of Melbourne announced the creation of a global center for research into treatments for future pandemics. His calling: “rapidly design and test new therapies” that would be made available to the public “in the months following the appearance of a pandemic”.

This new center owes its launch to “the exceptional generosity of international businessman and philanthropist, Geoffrey Cumming”, a Canadian and New Zealand citizen who lives in Melbourne. Mr. Cumming – who notably chaired the Western Oil Sands and administered more than thirty companies – donated 250 million Australian dollars (172 million euros) to create this center. It’s about “largest philanthropic commitment ever made in favor of biomedical research”underlines the University of Melbourne.

“When we discovered the amount of this donation, we opened our eyes roundconfides the immunologist Brigitte Autran, who chairs, in France, the new committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks. These are very Anglo-Saxon financing mechanisms. In Europe, we are not so lucky. » The University of Melbourne says research “additional funds, primarily for the first five years, but also over a twenty-year horizon”. The government of the State of Victoria, the main public partner, has pledged to pay 400 million Australian dollars. Other prospective partners, the international technology industry and philanthropic organizations.

“Advanced Molecular Platforms”

This center, called the “Global Cumming Center for Pandemic Therapeutics” (CGCPT), will be directed by infectious disease specialist Sharon Lewin, current president of the International AIDS Society. It will be created within the Doherty Institute, at the University of Melbourne, also directed by Sharon Lewin.

Why did you set up this center in this Australian city? One of the reasons is “Australia’s success during the Covid-19 pandemic”, explains Geoffrey Cumming in a press release. The Doherty Institute, in fact, was the first to cultivate the SARS-CoV-2 virus outside of China, a virus whose genome data it then shared with biobanks around the world.

“An effective response to a pandemic requires both vaccines and treatments, points out Sharon Lewin. But innovation in anti-infective therapies has lagged behind vaccines. » Thus, during the first twelve months of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were “137 billion dollars [autant d’euros] invested in public vaccine research globally, compared to only $7 billion for research into therapies”. If a 90% effective treatment against Covid-19 had been available on a large scale from July 2020, “more than four million deaths could have been avoided worldwide”notes the Australian infectiologist.

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