The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has signed a five-year cooperative agreement worth up to $28 million with Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) to develop methods for preventing the global spread of viruses like chikungunya and Zika.
The goal of DARPA’s Pandemic Protection Platform (P3) program is to develop protective antibody treatments that can be rushed to healthcare providers around the world within 60 days after the outbreak of viral disease. VUMC’s is one of four cooperative agreements to be implemented under the program.
“We need to be able to move at this speed considering how quickly outbreaks can get out of control,” Col. Matthew Hepburn, MD, DARPA’s P3 program manager, said in a statement when the program was first announced. “The technology needs to work on any viral disease, whether it’s one humans have faced before or not.”
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