Dundee joins global network dedicated to accelerated breakthroughs in human health

Wellcome Leap (Leap), a U.S.-based non-profit organisation founded by the Wellcome Trust to accelerate innovations that benefit global health, today announced the first participants in the newly established Leap Health Breakthrough Network.

Dundee is among 21 world-class institutions across six continents representing a network of over 150,000 researchers who have signed an agreement that sets a new bar for fast-paced research and development.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of tackling urgent, large-scale health challenges quickly and across disciplines, organisations, and borders. It is imperative that good ideas are identified and funded quickly, and that researchers across many institutions can build solutions together.

Currently it can take as long as a year to finalise a research funding agreement, and when collaboration is required, work frequently cannot begin until all parties have signed – further prolonging the delay. What’s more, key components needed to catalyse innovation sometimes come from individual researchers or smaller institutions that are often left out of major research initiatives. Breakthroughs require momentum, and diverse capabilities, wherever they exist globally.

The Leap Health Breakthrough Network will help eliminate barriers to progress thanks to the first-of-its-kind Master Academic Research Funding Agreement (MARFA), which equitably addresses all terms and conditions, including IP, ownership, and publication.

Now that the University has signed the MARFA, it will need to negotiate only the statement of work and cost before funds can be transmitted and work can begin, often in days, shaving months or more from development timelines.

Professor Iain Gillespie, Principal & Vice-Chancellor at the University, said, “Dundee is proud to be a charter signatory of Leap and to realising the collaborative advantage of this incredible network to accelerating health breakthroughs and transform lives.”

Dr Regina E. Duga, Leap CEO, added, “Wellcome Leap has removed traditional obstacles to build a network that can mobilise and synchronise to solve problems in human health faster than has ever been possible.”

The rapid research framework is hoped to advance breakthroughs in a variety of health issues worldwide.

"The world has just seen an unprecedented scientific advance — the delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine in 10 months,” said Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. “Wellcome Leap has catalysed a first-ever global network that will help deliver, well beyond this pandemic, new breakthroughs along what would previously have been considered impossible timelines."

The University of Dundee has shown throughout the pandemic how we can respond quickly to the urgent need to establish research projects, pivot existing work to new targets and help the international effort to take on new challenges such as that presented by COVID-19.

University staff have engaged in and led key national and international COVID-19 research projects and clinical trials, helped establish laboratory testing, and offered expert advice to government.