The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropy managed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, is putting $25 million toward research into COVID-19 treatments, the Verge reports.
Most of the funds — $20 million — are going toward the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, which was established earlier this month with seed funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, it adds. According to a press release from the Gates Foundation from then, it and the Wellcome Trust were contributing up to $50 million to the initiative and the Mastercard Impact Fund was contributing $25 million. The rest of the CZI funds, the Verge notes, would be made available if needed.
According to the Gates Foundation, the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will be coordinating with the World Health Organization, government and private funding organizations, and others to coordinate the drug development and manufacturing process.
"In joining the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, we're taking part in a coordinated response that will help address this outbreak, and future outbreaks as well," Cori Bargmann, the head of science at CZI, says in a statement. "By working together, we can dramatically accelerate drug development and deployment to find the effective therapeutics that will ultimately save lives."