$172 million from Geoff Cumming to fight future pandemics

A Canadian businessman currently residing in Australia, Geoffrey Cumming recently announced $172 million commitment over 20 years to fight the next pandemic in Australia’s largest ever donation to medical research.

Inspired by the record-fast creation of messenger RNA vaccines that blunted the impact of COVID-19, the Canadian philanthropist is providing the funding over 20 years to try the same with therapeutics during future pandemic threats.

The donation will fund a research center in Melbourne that will develop technologies to quickly create antiviral treatments such as monoclonal antibodies when new infectious diseases emerge.

Geoffrey Cumming is putting up what is purportedly the largest ever gift to medical research in Australia to create the Cumming Global Center for Pandemic Therapeutics.

Stunned by the economic and political impact of COVID-19, he “wanted to do something to protect the world in the next pandemic,” says James Angus, a former dean of medicine at the University of Melbourne and a friend of Cumming.

Angus introduced Cumming, a Canadian and New Zealand citizen living in Melbourne, to infectious diseases researcher Sharon Lewin, head of the University of Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. Over a series of meetings, Lewin pitched the idea of working on antiviral treatments. “Most people don’t really understand what therapeutics [can do] in a pandemic,” says Lewin, who will head the new center.

A brochure introducing the center claims more than 4 million lives could have been saved if an effective COVID-19 drug had been available in sufficient quantities within 6 months of the start of the pandemic. Yet the $95 billion publicly invested globally in COVID-19 vaccines dwarfs the less than $5 billion spent on developing therapeutics for SARS-CoV-2 during the pandemic’s first year. “What struck me was how quickly we could make vaccines, and how slow we were with antivirals,” Cumming tells Science.

The new center aims to accelerate antiviral creation by focusing on the development of new pharmaceutical tools rather than drugs directly. The goal is “to rapidly adapt antivirals to a new pathogen, along the lines of what CEPI did for vaccines,” says Lewin, referring to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a foundation that funds vaccine R&D.

The center will go beyond the current staple of antivirals, a class of drugs known as small molecules, Lewin says. Three areas of initial focus will be improving monoclonal antibodies that neutralize viruses; targeting viral RNA rather than a pathogen’s proteins; and shoring up the human immune system’s own antiviral actions. The center will partner with industry to commercialize products and will not conduct clinical trials itself.

Cumming’s long-term commitment to the center reflects that developing such platforms takes time. “Twenty years felt right to me,” he says. The money can only support salaries, not facilities. With long-term, stable support, “researchers don’t have to write grants,” Angus says. Cumming’s gift is being supplemented by U.S. $52 million from the Australian state of Victoria, which will also provide a brand-new building. Angus believes other foundations may eventually add to the total. Seventy percent of the funding will support work by Doherty researchers, creating 160 jobs at the institute. The rest will go to scientists at sub centers around the world.

“This is a remarkable opportunity to bring scientists together to focus on prophylaxis and treatment beyond vaccines,” says Raymond Schinazi, an organic chemist at Emory University.

“This kind of funding is an incredible catalyst for biomedical advances,” adds Bruce Walker, an HIV expert at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, a Boston-based center for the development of vaccines for diseases of the immune system that received $100 million in support from entrepreneur and philanthropist Phillip Ragon and his wife, Susan. Another reason for investigating therapeutics, Walker says, is that “the HIV pandemic showed us that creating drugs can succeed where vaccines have failed.”

The donation to Melbourne’s The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, also known as the Doherty Institute, will go toward creating the Cumming Global Center for Pandemic Therapeutics.

The center will develop new technologies to treat future pathogens of pandemic potential.

“We’re trying to provide protection for Australia, for the world,” Cumming -currently a Melbourne resident- told reporters. “We will have more pandemics.”

Lewin described COVID-19 therapeutics as an area of “significant underinvestment.”

During the first year of the pandemic, $94 billion was publicly invested globally in vaccines compared to just $4.8 billion in therapeutics.

“We’re really looking at developing the technologies for the future, not the technologies we currently have,” Lewin said in a recent interview.

Born into a medical family in Kingston, Ontario, Geoff went on to become educated in economics at the University of Calgary, The London School of Economics (LSE), and the University of British Columbia. He initially worked in tax and international policy within the Government of Alberta before moving on to the Global Energy Group of the Royal Bank of Canada. Geoff led the Bank’s venture capital group in Western Canada and then joined Peters & Co Limited as a Partner.

He sold Asamera Oil Corporation Limited Canada to Mr. George Gardiner of Toronto, and was then appointed as President and CEO of Gardiner Oil and Gas, LLC. He subsequently became President and CEO of the parent company, Gardiner Group Capital of Toronto, and founded the international investment companies Emerald Capital and Karori Capital. Geoff was Chairman of Western Oil Sands for six years and has been a Director of over thirty companies, both in Canada and on several continents. One early stage company, where he is the largest shareholder, has grown into a $6 billion dollar, pre-eminent integrated retirement company.

Geoff was active in the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) in both Canada and New Zealand and is a former Governor of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

In recent years, Geoff has become very active in global philanthropy. He founded and continues to fund The Ryman Prize- a global, $250,000 prize annually awarded to advancements that positively impact quality of life for the elderly, which is presented by the Prime Minister of New Zealand. He made one of the largest donations ever in Canada by gifting $100 million towards long-term medical research at the University of Calgary, a contribution that was matched by the Government of Alberta. He is active with CAWST of Calgary, which does important water and sanitation work in lesser developed countries. Geoff is working currently on a significant international initiative to assist in the stabilization of the global human population.