This tiny federal agency was built to respond to a crisis like coronavirus

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This tiny federal agency was built to respond to a crisis like coronavirus

It seems like an agency tailor-made for a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic.To get more news about coronavirus slogan, you can visit shine news official website.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, was created to invest in drug development projects that private industry wouldn’t touch, such as anthrax vaccines and therapies for Ebola, Zika, or swine flu.
Lawmakers were so confident that BARDA could help scientists develop a coronavirus vaccine, therapy, or even a diagnostic test that Congress has showered the agency with a $3.5 billion boost in funding, more than tripling its total budget.

But consultants and experts in biotech and in academia told STAT they had serious concerns about BARDA’s preparedness to absorb the massive new workload it will take to identify targets for a coronavirus vaccine or therapy.

Already, stakeholders are raising concerns about the responsiveness of a long-troubled contracting shop within BARDA, which will play an outsized role in doling out the new funding. In addition, the office has informed the companies it is partnering with on other matters — Ebola or influenza, for example — that its staff needs to put aside other obligations to focus solely on Covid-19.Zika and Ebola were very much a dress rehearsal for coronavirus,” said Chris Stanley, a consultant that focuses on helping companies get BARDA contracts. “This is on another scale.”

While BARDA has had early successes in responding to Covid-19, drug industry officials are pressing the agency to move even faster, and to use every tool at its disposal — including controversial contracting authorities that bypass a number of government safeguards — to get money flowing to industry as soon as possible.

“Everyone knows that the government wheels can turn slowly and bureaucracy can raise its ugly head, and this is a race against time,” BIO President Jim Greenwood said. “This is a matter of life and death.”An agency spokesperson insisted that the organization is using “every mechanism available under [existing regulations] to speed the contract award process,” and noted that BARDA has been able to award up to $750,000 grants within 12 days.

The mission of BARDA’s scientists is to set out to identify promising targets, offer federal funding, and then provide free consultations with engineers, chemists, and regulatory experts.

To its credit, BARDA already has a hand in some of industry’s splashiest Covid-19 projects. It is pouring millions into Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine research, helping Moderna Therapeutics prepare for late stage clinical trials of its potential Covid-19 vaccine, and offering advice to help device companies get their Covid-19 tests through the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency clearance process.

BARDA is, as some staffers put it, the closest thing the government has to a venture capital firm.

Indeed, like a venture capital firm, BARDA doles out funding and advice to biotech companies trying to push a product through the FDA approval process. BARDA’s longtime director, Rick Bright, talks like a venture capitalist, too. He speaks frequently of BARDA’s role in bridging the “valley of death,” the dearth of funding that often keeps promising developments from proceeding into late stage trials.

BARDA even holds its own annual version of the pitch fests that have become wildly popular among venture capitalists. Companies swarm the event to vie for the opportunity to give a “lightning talk,” as BARDA calls the pitches for funding.