NEW ORLEANS – The National Institutes of Health has selected Tulane National Primate Research Center to lead a new partnership between the seven federally funded National Primate Research Centers to combine their efforts to accelerate promising COVID-19 vaccine and drug research.
The NIH contract, awarded at $1.7 million for the first year, has the potential to reach up to $6.5 million over a four-year funding period.
Tulane will play a leading role in coordinating the evaluation of promising COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics for COVTEN (Coronavirus Vaccine and Therapeutic Evaluation Network). The partnership will standardize research protocols and methods of data collection, share preliminary data and best practices across centers, and minimize the use of nonhuman primates by having single control groups across multiple studies. The centers, which normally conduct research independently, aim to harmonize their studies to provide more useful comparative data.
As the coordinating center, Tulane National Primate Research Center will develop and refine standard operating procedures, coordinate studies, and establish a central data center to share preliminary and final results. This will optimize studies so that scientists can get answers to their research questions with fewer animals and more rigorous controls
“By establishing this structure, we will maximize work being done across the NPRC’s so that we can find answers to critical research questions with fewer animals and more rigorous controls,” said Jay Rappaport, principal investigator and director of the Tulane National Primate Research Center. “This will help us be more efficient in responding to emerging infectious diseases now and in the future. It’s an honor for Tulane to play a leading role in this by serving as the coordinating center.”
