COVID-19 Novartis response
In the face of a global crisis, Novartis has quickly mobilized R&D capabilities, medicines, clinical trials expertise and philanthropic aid to address the coronavirus pandemic.
Donations
Contributions upwards of USD 40 million to over 60 projects around the world that support local communities impacted by this crisis. These include major donations to strengthen medical infrastructure and provide on-site support in many countries.
Commitment to donate up to 130 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to support the global COVID-19 pandemic response. Sandoz, the Novartis generics and biosimilars division, is also maintaining prices on a basket of essential medicines that may help in the treatment of COVID-19.
External collaborations
We are undertaking several efforts to leverage our capabilities in discovery, development and scale-up manufacturing. We are partnering with multi-stakeholder external consortia, including:
- COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, coordinated by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and MasterCard
- COVID-19 direct partnership organized by Innovative Medicines Initiative
- ACTIV partnership planned by National Institutes of Health
- Member of R&D Leaders Consortium
- Drug discovery efforts with the University of California, Berkeley
Internal discovery
Novartis is leading, partnering and supporting the identification of therapeutic candidates against coronavirus. We have hand-selected a library of compounds with activity against viral targets of relevance to COVID-19, and we’re working with a consortium of academic institutions and companies that is looking to screen compounds at an appropriate laboratory facility.
We are also spearheading a collaborative effort to make direct-acting anti-viral compounds to the coronavirus family, including COVID-19, SARS and MERS. This early-stage drug discovery work builds on the collaboration that formed the Novartis-Berkeley Center for Proteomics and Chemistry Technologies. The new open-science effort will target a piece of machinery that’s shared by several known coronaviruses.
Clinical investigations
Together with the research community, Novartis is assessing whether our clinical-stage investigational or approved medicines could be repurposed beyond their intended or approved indications to treat complications of COVID-19 disease.
Novartis plans to sponsor or co-sponsor multiple large clinical trials of its existing medicines as COVID-19 treatments, including hydroxychloroquine as well as Jakavi® (ruxolitinib), in collaboration with Incyte, and Ilaris® (canakinumab).
Disclaimer:
These materials contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as “to address,” “contribution,” “commitment,” “support,” “undertaking,” “eorts,” “maintaining,” “potential,” “plans,” “to sponsor,” “leading,” “partnering,” “supporting,” “looking,” “spearheading,” “can,” “will,” “may,” “could,” “accelerate,” “to leverage,” “assessing,” “builds on,” or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational or approved products described in these materials, or regarding discussions about Novartis internal, external and collaborative research and development efforts against COVID-19, assessments of whether our clinical-stage investigational or approved medicines could be repurposed beyond their intended or approved indications to treat complications of COVID-19, support of clinical trials for existing and investigational Novartis medicines, the Sandoz commitment to maintain prices on a basket of essential medicines that may help in the treatment of COVID-19, commitments to contribute and donate up to USD 40 million and up to 130 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to support the global COVID-19 pandemic response. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the investigational or approved products described in these materials will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that the activities and efforts described in these materials will be achieved or succeed, in the expected time frame, or at all. In particular, our expectations regarding such products, activities and efforts could be aected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures and requirements for increased pricing transparency; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political, economic and business conditions, including the effects of and efforts to mitigate pandemic diseases such as COVID-19; safety, quality, data integrity or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG’s current Form 20 F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in these materials as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in these materials as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.