About ACTIV

Overview

Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) is a public-private partnership led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and coordinated by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) to develop a research strategy for prioritizing and speeding development of the most promising COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

ACTIV brings together NIH with its sibling agencies in the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); other government agencies, including the Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA); the European Medicines Agency (EMA); and representatives from academia, philanthropic organizations and biopharmaceutical companies.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global crisis that has been met with a swift and extraordinary response. The research community is sifting through more than 100 potential preventives and treatments. However, lack of coordination could make interpretation and comparison of the results impossible because resources, like patients for trials or testing facilities, are not unlimited. 

With limited resources, there is a need to coordinate and streamline processes to make the best use of biomedical research resources and testing of preclinical compounds. Also, there is a need to prioritize the most promising vaccine candidates and move them into clinical trials in a way that is safe and efficient. For more information, visit the NIH website.

Goals:

The goals of ACTIV are to:

• Develop a collaborative, streamlined forum to identify preclinical treatments
• Accelerate clinical testing of the most promising vaccines and treatments
• Improve clinical trial capacity and effectiveness
• Accelerate the evaluation of vaccine candidates to enable rapid authorization or approval