Blocking Transmission
Medicines to reduce the transmission of infectious agents from person-to-person, blocking the spread of disease for community public health benefit
Goal
To develop platforms that provide rapid, broad, and durable protection against infectious agents.
Background and Current Landscape
No medicines exist that have been approved specifically as transmission blockers with a community benefit. Vaccines protect individuals but do not purposefully target the spread of disease from person-to-person. Recent advances in innate, pan-viral immune activators, cutting-edge delivery mechanisms for genetic material, and programmable genetic medicines that can adjust to a virus and hit a conserved sequence at a cellular level suggest that transmission reduction is now possible.
Investments in this subdomain aim to translate these developments into clinical proof-of-concept while increasing the funding base for clinical validation of these new modalities and raising awareness of the policy and regulatory environment needed to enable these advances to create population-level benefit.
Potential Applications
Respiratory and Enteric Pathogens
Accelerator’s Applications of Interest:
- Respiratory infections (Influenza, Respiratory syncytial virus)
- Enteric viruses/bacteria/parasites
- Pandemic pathogens
Potential Broader Impacts:
- Delivery of therapeutic peptides and proteins to mucosal tissues of the lung or gut
Selected Partners
