The Open Phil anthropy Project granted US$17.5 million last year to Sherlock Biosciences, a startup firm in Cambridge, Mass., that’s developing quick, inexpensive tools for diagnosing viruses.

That funding, as well as an impact investment in Sherlock, is aiding the company’s efforts to create the tools on two platforms—one that relies on the company’s CRISPR, or gene-editing, technology, and a second that will use synthetic biology to create a paper-strip viral diagnostic test that could be used anywhere, from a doctor’s office to a home in a developing country, says Rahul Dhanda , Sherlock’s CEO.

The critical importance of this less-than-year-old company’s work has become evident with the advent of COVID-19, the coronavirus sweeping the globe, and as a result, Sherlock is working quickly with companies that have the experience and capabilities to take Sherlock’s products through the regulatory process, and to scale and commercialize them.

Open Phil, founded by Dustin Moskovitz , a co-founder of Facebook and work-management firm Asana, and his wife, Cari Tuna , is one of a handful of philanthropic organizations—with some notable exceptions, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—that, to date, has focused on funding scientific research and therapeutic solutions aimed at potential pandemics.

“Relative to other areas of philanthropy, funding for original science and research and pandemics, specifically, is extraordinarily limited, often [focused on] specific geographies, or viruses or diseases, and it’s ebbed and flowed over time,” says Eric Kessler , founder of Arabella Advisors in Washington, D.C., a philanthropic advisory firm.

Exceptions include Gates as well as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and the late Paul Allen , co-founder of Microsoft, who funded efforts to fight the Ebola epidemic in Africa in 2014. Former President Jimmy Carter’s work with Rotary International, meanwhile, has for years worked to address river blindness and ringworm, Kessler says.

“A silver lining in this tragedy is that funding for this work should increase, you would hope,” he says.

At Bank of America, Miki Akimoto , a managing director in philanthropic solutions, says the firm regularly works with donors interested in specific diseases, such as cancer. “But relatively few of our clients focus on global public health generally or pandemics specifically,” Akimoto says. “I suspect that will change.”

On March 5, the Gates Foundation announced it would funnel US$100 million toward COVID-19 research and therapeutics, including help preparing low-and-middle income countries in Africa and South Asia against the spread of the disease.

What Philanthropists are Doing Now

On March 10, Gates along with the U.K.’s Wellcome Trust and Mastercard, also announced a combined US$125 million commitment to the creation of the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, a collaborative effort with an “end-to-end focus, from drug pipeline development through manufacturing and scale-up,” according to a news release.

The Therapeutics Accelerator “will play a catalytic role by accelerating and evaluating new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients with COVID-19 in the immediate term, and other viral pathogens in the longer-term,” the release said.

Wellcome and Gates each are contributing US$50 million to the effort, and the Mastercard Impact Fund is contributing US$25 million. The Gates contribution is part of its US$100 million overall effort.

“ A silver lining in this tragedy is that funding for this work should increase, ” — Eric Kessler, founder, Arabella Advisors

Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy , meanwhile, is focusing on “the role technology and data and public-private partnerships can play in responding to the pandemic,” says Tom Kalil , chief innovation officer.

That’s led to a number of efforts, including providing seed funding to government agencies, including the U.S. Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which are working on therapies, vaccines, and diagnostics related to COVID-19.

For example, Schmidt Futures has provided funding to a collaborative project between George Mason University and Ceres Nanosciences in Manasses, Va., which is looking to improve the efficacy of testing for the coronavirus by a factor of five to 10, Kalil says.

The philanthropic initiative “is also encouraging foundations and investors to come together to share information about what they are doing so we can reinforce each other’s efforts,” he says.

That donors are stepping up to give to scientific research as well as to human services on the front lines of the virus is evident to Valerie Conn , president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance in Palo Alto, Calif.., which was formed about eight years ago by a group of foundations concerned about federal cutbacks to basic scientific research.

Conn has been directing many of them to the Therapeutics Accelerator and to a fund run by the World Health Organization, as well as to the fundamental research programs at local universities and medical centers, many of which are doing research to viral pandemics, she says.

“We can, with confidence, say UCLA, Washington University, the University of Chicago, they [and many others] have great science going on,” Conn says. “Let’s help you feel confident about continuing to give there.”

Open Phil funded research into pandemics at the outset because they “have the potential to cause significant, and perhaps unprecedented, harm,” says Michael Levine , a spokesman for the group. “We believe natural pandemics represent one of the biggest current risks to global welfare and stability, and the risks from engineered pandemics—whether via accidents or misuse—may grow in the future.”

In addition to Sherlock, Open Phil has provided about US$38 million in grant funding over time to the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, as well as grants for individual projects, such as US$11.3 million to the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design to develop a universal flu vaccine.

The philanthropy’s investment in Sherlock was made last year knowing the company couldn’t provide a “quick fix” to developing inexpensive, accessible viral diagnostics, but it wanted to help Sherlock get off the ground as a functioning research and development operation, Chris Somerville , a scientific research program officer at Open Phil, said in 2019.

Today, a quick fix would be welcome. Of its two platforms, Dhanda, Sherlock’s CEO, says the CRISPR-based technology for creating a reliable test for COVID-19 is closest to market. The company is working with a couple of companies that could lead to different versions of the test.

One is a version that may be launched in partnership with Cepheid, a molecular diagnostics company in Sunnyvale, Calif., that is part of Danaher , a global conglomerate, that would involve a simple cartridge-based system, Dhanda says.

The synthetic-biology-based paper test-strip option that could be used in any setting, in the developed or undeveloped world, will take at least 18 months to two years to develop, however. Speeding up that already-aggressive timeline is one area where philanthropic dollars could help.

“We could get down to something people could use in 12 months,” Dhanda says.