OpenVax - Vaccine

Executive Summary

Fight COVID-19 and future pandemics rapidly and equitably by repurposing existing widely-available off-patent low-cost vaccines with strong safety records. Win the global vaccine race, more justly.

Counterintuitively, certain live attenuated vaccines protect against a broad range of pathogens, via the cutting-edge science of “trained innate immunity.”
Compared to proprietary, monopolistic vaccine candidates, repurposed, low-cost, licensed actual vaccines have enormous scientific and economic advantages: Sooner – at Phase 3, on par with the ballyhooed leaders, but with huge advantages over them in distribution. Safer - Well- established safety histories, built over decades. Surer – There is no guarantee that a fully- effective proprietary vaccines will arrive, or be taken by the population. Better – they train the overall immune system, and may be superior in preventing disease; Cheaper – ~1000x less costly to develop; More Affordable – prices as low as eleven cents per dose; Combination – can potentially be used in combination with proprietary vaccines, each potentiating the other. Supply – current distribution is hundreds of millions to billions of doses per year; IP is nonexclusive, and open to all countries and companies; More Ethical Use of Public Funds – public funds for public IP, and free market competition among producers, rather providing taxpayer dollars to private monopolies that have not guaranteed affordable pricing or open access to their research.

Launch multiple phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials across an array of vaccines within weeks, perhaps more candidates than any other effort globally. Help create the field of vaccine repurposing, a new paradigm for pharma R&D, and an armamentarium for humanity. Nonprofit venture.

Advisors include the former head of R&D at GSK/Takeda/Gates Foundation; infectious disease specialists at Harvard and the Mayo Clinic; biotech expert for the Obama White House; parties include Harvard Medical School, Government of India, and Open Source Pharma Foundation. Capital campaign: $10M

– sufficient for testing and infrastructure to move not just one candidate, but an array of candidates, cohorts, and combinations through end of Phase 3 trials, and, if efficacy is found, through manufacturing and to start to reach the population at scale. Smaller increments are of concrete use as well--a single small Phase 3 trial for a single candidate has a remaining funding need of $500k, and small donations are of help too. A historic opportunity.