We believe that with enough focus and funding, these problems are tractable. Intercept is a $500 million philanthropic initiative that will take advantage of these new tools to catalyze the development of two types of products: broad-spectrum preventatives and air cleaning technologies. Together, these technologies can radically reduce the burden of respiratory infections, and can eventually help eliminate them altogether.
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These are products—a shot, a nasal spray, a pill—that defend individuals against rhinoviruses, influenza, coronaviruses, and other respiratory viruses simultaneously. Our goal is to catalyze the development of safe and tolerable preventatives that will prevent more than 75% of symptomatic respiratory infections in as few doses as possible, via easy-to-administer modalities, and that have a credible path to ~60% uptake. We will prioritize approaches that are convenient with minimal side effects to support the goals of widespread adoption and uptake. This will be the core technical challenge some of these drug candidates face: they need to find the sweet spot between being too narrow (targeting only one viral strain like most vaccines today) and being too broad (causing unwanted side effects, e.g., via excessive stimulation of the immune system or unwanted off target effects on the host).
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Still, even with sufficient funding, developing a truly broad-spectrum preventative is technically very challenging: respiratory viruses include several different virus families and some have many variants that mutate constantly. Further, the safety bar for developing preventative medicines is appropriately extremely high. If these drugs are to be given to millions of otherwise healthy people, the likelihood they cause harm needs to be extremely low. This means very large and long-lasting clinical trials, which can increase costs and timelines.
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Air cleaning technologies improve indoor air quality by removing or inactivating airborne viruses, just like municipal water infrastructure removes and inactivates pathogens from our drinking water supply. Our goal is to catalyze the uptake of air cleaning technologies that safely reduce infectious aerosols by >75% and have a path to >50% uptake in transmission-relevant indoor spaces at low cost.
There are several ACTs we’ll focus on initially, each of which layers on top of building ventilation systems that dilute and recycle air. These technologies can often (but not always) be used in combination, and each has unique characteristics that make it more or less well-suited for different types of indoor spaces and use cases.
Air filtration: Products that remove particulate matter and pathogens from the air. Filters can either be placed in the ducts of mechanical ventilation systems to act on recirculated air, or in separate devices placed or mounted in a single room.
Antimicrobial light: A specific wavelength of ultraviolet light (“far-UVC”) that can inactivate pathogens in the air and on surfaces, but does not penetrate human skin or eyes enough to harm dividing cells.
Antimicrobial vapors: Compounds such as triethylene glycol and propylene glycol that can inactivate pathogens in the air and on surfaces, by being drawn into respiratory droplets and inactivating them.
From the article:
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