DARPA names Pandemic, Prevention, Platform program research teams

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced that its Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program has all performer institutions under contract and working to developing technology that can quickly prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

P3 was launched last year in response to the lack of preventative or therapeutic solutions to Ebola, Zika, and other outbreaks. It aims to identify infectious diseases and develop preventative measures and nucleic-acid-based technologies in 60 days or less to prevent them from escalating into pandemics.

“Advances in medical countermeasures have formed a strong foundation, enabling the creation of a true end-to-end pandemic prevention platform,” Col. Matthew Hepburn, program manager for P3, said. “However, experience gained from conventional responses to emerging infectious diseases has demonstrated that significant bottlenecks hinder the rapid response to an emerging infectious threat.”

Duke University, Vanderbilt University, Medimmune, Abcellera Biologics and other P3 performer teams work to develop technologies that foster an end-to-end pandemic response platform that studies viruses for downstream antibody discovery and final testing of therapeutic products.

“P3 seeks to demonstrate an ability to rapidly produce virus needed to test and evaluate therapies, obtain high potency antibodies within the first weeks of an outbreak and to scale delivery methods into humans to produce protective levels inside the patient,” Hepburn said.

P3 performer teams are also tasked with developing nucleic acid technologies that can deliver sufficient serum concentrations to protect against infection in less than three days.

Hepburn provided the P3 update during the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting held last week in Austin, Texas.