The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is an innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil organisations launched in Davos in 2017 to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics.

CEPI has received multi-year funding from Norway, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Wellcome. CEPI has also received single-year investments from the Government of Belgium and the United Kingdom. The European Union provides financial support for relevant projects through their Horizon 2020 programme as well as through the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership. CEPI has reached over US$750 million of its $1 billion funding target.

Since its launch in January 2017, CEPI has announced three calls for proposals. The first call was for candidate vaccines against Lassa virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and Nipah virus. The second call was for the development of platforms that can be used for rapid vaccine development against unknown pathogens. The third call is for candidate vaccines against Chikungunya and Rift Valley fever viruses.

To date, CEPI has committed to investing over $413 million in vaccine development. This includes 18 vaccine candidates against its priority pathogens (six against Lassa virus, five against MERS-CoV, three against Nipah virus, two against Chikungunya, two against Rift Valley fever) and three vaccine platforms to develop vaccines against Disease X.

To assess the effectiveness of these platforms 7 additional vaccine candidates are being developed (two against influenza, one against Marburg virus, two against Rabies virus, one against Respiratory Synctial Virus, and one against yellow fever).

Duke-NUS is Singapore’s flagship graduate-entry medical school, established in 2005 as the result of a strategic, government-led partnership between two world-class institutions: Duke University School of Medicine and the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Through an innovative curriculum, students at Duke-NUS are nurtured to become multi-faceted ‘Clinicians Plus’ poised to steer the healthcare and biomedical ecosystem in Singapore and beyond. A leader in ground-breaking research and translational innovation, Duke-NUS has gained international renown through its five signature research programmes and nine centres. The enduring impact of its discoveries is amplified by its successful Academic Medicine partnership with Singapore Health Services (SingHealth), Singapore’s largest healthcare group. This strategic alliance has spawned 15 Academic Clinical Programmes, which harness multi-disciplinary research and education to transform medicine and improve lives.

Duke-NUS aims to nurture outstanding healthcare innovators by fostering an innovation ecosystem. By managing intellectual property generated by the researchers and faculty at Duke-NUS, it works to ensure optimal commercial outcomes for Duke-NUS’ inventions.

To date, Duke-NUS has filed 141 patent applications, had 21 licences executed, and been granted 64 patents. Duke-NUS investigators have disclosed 163 new inventions and 16 startup companies have spun off from these inventions. For its outstanding research work, 11 Singapore Translational Research (STaR) Investigator awards, 37 Clinician Scientist awards and 39 Transition awards have been awarded to Duke-NUS faculty. The research community in Duke-NUS has published more than 5,000 papers in international peer-reviewed journals.

For more information, please visit www.duke-nus.edu.sg