The EU has established a €100m fund to support research and development into medical countermeasures that could tackle public health threats, including antimicrobial resistance and pathogens with “high pandemic potential”.

The European Commission (EC) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced the creation of the HERA Invest fund, a top-up to the InvestEU programme that aims to give an additional boost to investment, innovation, and job creation in Europe.

The fund will be run by the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), which was established in 2021 to help prevent, detect, and rapidly respond to future health emergencies.

“Currently, European companies find it difficult to access sufficient public and private funding for the development and scaling up of cutting-edge solutions in health and life sciences,” the EC and EIB explained in a joint statement.

The HERA Invest funding is specifically geared towards small and mid-sized companies that develop medical countermeasures addressing antimicrobial resistance, pathogens with high pandemic or epidemic potential, or chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats originating from accidental or deliberate release.

EU commissioner for health and food safety, Stella Kyriakides, said: "With HERA Invest, we are investing €100m in advancing research and development to design new innovative medical countermeasures to step up our preparedness for future health threats.

“Together with the EIB, HERA Invest will attract additional private and public investment and provide European companies with the certainty needed to invest in ground-breaking innovation to address priority health threats.”

Under the initiative, the EIB will provide eligible companies with venture loans covering a maximum of 50% of total project costs. Companies applying for the funding will enter a rolling application process in which the EIB will assess whether an operation is eligible based on defined criteria and a project’s "commercial and scientific viability”.

Thomas Östros, EIB vice-president in charge of health and life sciences, said: “COVID-19 made it painfully clear that we must address the weaknesses in our health systems.

"This support is crucial to keep Europe at the forefront of innovation, and it might well save millions of lives around the planet when a new health emergency hits.”

Source: pmlive.com