Anti-viral drugs can be final solution as WHO warns against lowering our guard to COVID-19

Suggestions that COVID-19 is on the wane have been strongly contradicted by the World Health Organization’s senior pandemics scientist, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove.

And her criticism of virus complacency has fuelled calls for research and development of anti-viral drugs to stop all coronaviruses at source, in addition to ongoing vaccines and testing for COVID-19 variants.

Dr Van Kerkhove, a highly regarded infectious disease epidemiologist and World Health Organization (WHO) Head of the Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Unit, delivered her wake-up call in a BBC TV interview where she insisted that COVID-19 was still evolving and the world must evolve with it:

“It will not end with this latest wave (Omicron) and it will not be the last variant you will hear us (WHO) speaking about – unfortunately,” she told BBC interviewer Sophie Raworth.

Countries with high immunity and vaccination levels were starting to think the pandemic is over, she added, but despite 10 billion vaccine doses delivered globally, more than three billion people were yet to receive one dose, leaving the world highly susceptible to further COVID mutations - a global problem for which a global solution was needed.

She also challenged assumptions that the COVID Omicron variant was mild: “It is still putting people in hospital…and it will not be the last (variant). There is no guarantee that the next one will be less severe. We must keep the pressure up – we cannot give it a free ride.”

WNF Chairman Paul Stannard said: “We welcome Dr Van Kerkhove’s timely intervention. Too many people think we can sit back with COVID now, forgetting lessons learned the hard way.

“Such as there’s always another variant just around the corner, and testing and vaccines are not the complete answer.

“Even if Omicron seems milder than its predecessors – though this may be due to vaccinations and growing herd immunity – who can say that a more fatal COVID mutation will not follow, or an all-new virus is waiting to strike.

“Many other pathogens have entered humans in last 15 years including SARS, Ebola, Zika virus and Indian Flu variants, so permanent pandemic protection investment is vital to restoring confidence in our way of life and the global markets.

“An even older lesson is Spanish Flu (1918-20): the death toll was relatively contained initially, lulling people already fatigued by WW1 devastation into thinking the worst was over.

“But that virus then mutated into its most deadly strain, killing 50 million people when Earth’s population numbered less than two billion. All of which suggests we must maintain or redouble our efforts against COVID-19 and other potential threats.

“We have already benefitted from greater healthcare investment and research due to the pandemic: experts say the first six months of the emergency delivered sector progress equivalent to the previous 10 years.

“This helped unusually rapid deployment of new and better testing and vaccines that have driven down infection, hospitalization and deaths, but we hope that the WHO view will now foster a new and potentially more effective development against COVID and other threats – anti-viral drugs.

“Instead of attacking the virus like a vaccine, anti-viral drugs aim to stop it functioning in the human body. Merck and Pfizer say they have re-purposed existing drugs to do just that.

“But a better option is gathering momentum using nanomedicine, AI and advanced computational technology to develop all-new drugs more quickly and effectively, potentially delivering breakthroughs against many serious killers, including viruses, cancers and heart disease.

“WNF believes these can disrupt the traditional pharmaceutical industry as Tesla has done in the auto industry, or SpaceX and Blue Origin have done in space.”

California-based Verseon has developed an AI and computational drug development platform and has six drug candidates, including an anti-viral drug to potentially block all coronaviruses and some flu variants, potentially transforming pandemic protection.

This could be on the market within 18 months after securing a final $60 million investment, a small amount compared to the $1 billion pharma industry norm for a single new drug (source: Biospace), and weighed against 5.6 million COVID deaths globally and an estimated $3 trillion in economic output (source: Statista) lost since the start of the pandemic.

Verseon Head of Discovery Biology Anirban Datta said: “Vaccines and the current anti-viral drugs are retrospective solutions that don’t treat newly emergent strains. We need a different strategy to avoid always being one step behind viral mutations.

“So, we switched target from the virus to the human host. If we stop SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) entering our cells which, unlike viruses, don’t mutate then we have a long-term solution.

“Even better, the strategy should work against other coronaviruses and influenza strains that use the same mechanism as SARS-CoV-2 to infect cells – a key point, since it surely won’t be the last pandemic to affect humanity.”

Top five tech growth sectors forecast to quadruple over next five years

Five key tech sectors will enjoy a combined growth of more than 400% over the next five years, according to market reports.

These innovation pacesetters – nanotechnology, AI, Digital Twins, genomics and other biotech life sciences – attracted a combined $892.63 billion of investment in 2020, set to rocket to $2.44 trillion by 2025.

Top five tech growth sectors forecast to quadruple over next few years

Paul Stannard, Chairman of the Vector Innovation Fund (VIF) – an international alternative investment vehicle for advancing enabling technologies globally – said: 

“These top five tech growth sectors are the ones currently lighting up investment opportunities, and we have specifically aligned our investment pipeline to them. They hold the key to solving major global challenges relating to sustainability, healthcare, energy, food resources and equal and fair distribution of innovation worldwide.

“Most tech sectors are growing, but these game-changers attracting that $2+ trillion investment won’t be companies enhancing things that already exist, like simply making your TV screen sharper.

“We are backing tech companies that transform how we deal with healthcare and future pandemics, sustainable clean energy, food production and combine these opportunities with AI and machine learning.

“Our fund’s first key target is health tech, which has enjoyed record levels of investment in the wake of COVID, so we would focus on potential nanomedicine breakthroughs such as reversing degenerative diseases and cancers or creating a multi-vaccine to protect us from a range of diseases.

“And while funds like ours can supply management expertise, our target companies are also those showing the skill to commercialise and monetise their offering to a willing market.

“What we have seen with the pandemic as well as Climate Change is a global realisation that we must also accelerate investment in enabling technologies supporting environmental, social & corporate governance (ESG) and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) principles where impact can deliver better outcomes for everyone.”

The Top Five tech growth sectors highlighted by market reports are:

1. Artificial Intelligence has the most far-reaching potential, and the market is forecast to grow 16-fold from $62.35 billion in 2020 to $997.77 billion by 2028 at a 40.2% CAGR,  being the catalyst for accelerating almost all tech sectors and has already shown how it can enhance food science, lower retail and banking costs, and develop medical advances such as remote patient monitoring and more intelligent clinical diagnosis.

AI is transforming future healthcare, food, energy, transport, construction, aviation, and many other sectors. Combining AI with nanotechnologies, for instance, allows platform technologies to re-invent the industries over this decade.

According to data gathered by StockApps.com, in the last quarter of 2020, there was a massive surge in investment in AI technology companies totalling $73.4 billion, which was a $15 billion increase on the start of 2020. In the first half of 2021, we have seen 4,080 investment deals in AI technology companies, according to the investment monitoring platform Pitchbook. The average investment deal flow value has increased nearly three-fold in 2020.

2. Nanotechnology is set to grow its market from $54.2 billion in 2020 to $126.8 billion by 2027, which has enabled significant advances in medicine, electronics, environmental solutions, and materials, with the potential to improve drug delivery procedure and storage, and renewable energy. For example, COVID-19 accelerated both vaccine and virus testing and also drove specific developments such as nanotech material masks that filter out 99.9% of bacteria, viruses, and particulates.

According to the investment monitoring platform, Pitchbook, in 2020, $5.56 billion was invested in nanotechnology companies. In the first half of 2021, there has already been $7.72 billion of investment in nanotechnology companies, from 775 deals, with the average deal size value increasing three-fold in just the last six months. 
Paul Sheedy, a co-founder of the World Nano Foundation (WNF), said: “The COVID pandemic is fuelling an investment trend behind the nanoscale tech that is already being billed as the ‘COVID Decade’ and driven by the fear of human and economic devastation from another pandemic.

“And that risk is high: there are only ten clinically approved solutions to over 220 viruses known to affect humans, and we can expect at least two new viruses to spill from their natural hosts into humans annually, but nanotech and biotech can help counter this threat.”

3. Biotechnology is the biggest and most mature market here, forecast to grow from $752.88 billion in 2020 to $2.44 trillion by 2028 at a 15.83% CAGR through significant effects on agriculture, improving the nutritional value and preservation of foods, minimising waste, and healthcare advances – the last being highlighted by the record-breaking speed of the Pfizer COVID vaccine development last year.

According to Nature magazine, global biotech funding in 2020 had its best year ever: 73 life science firms alone raised a collective $22 billion. Private fund-raising also mushroomed by 37% on the previous year - already a stellar year. This is being further fuelled with the COVID-19 mitigation market and the advent of a surge of investment in pandemic protection and preparedness using multi vaccines, autoimmune treatments and early intervention testing. Pitchbook has recorded 3,800 deals in biotechnology companies in the first half of 2021, totalling $34.48 billion in investment in these companies. Again, the average investment level is nearly three times what it was the previous year, and post valuations of invested biotech companies have doubled from 2020.

4. Digital Twins are a new up and coming high growth tech sector, forecast to grow 15-fold from $3.1 billion in 2020 to $48.2 billion by 2026 at a 58% CAGR, with the technology already widely used in the construction, energy, healthcare, automotive, and aerospace sectors, and new fields opening up all the time. 

According to Pitchbook, last year, there was $103.8 million of capital invested from just 53 investors into the Digital Twins technology start-ups. One company, Cityzenith, has added over 5000 new investors in the last 18 months, raising $10 million to date.

Cityzenith uses its Digital Twin SmartWorldProOS™ software platform to enable architects, planners, and energy providers to track, manage, and reduce emissions and energy waste from individual buildings, infrastructure, and even whole cities and has just reported major contract wins and seen its share price rocket 161% in early 2021. The company is partway through a $15 million Regulation A+ investment raise to scale up its international commercial opportunities. 

The Digital Twin sector is an interesting space with tremendous growth opportunities for nimble, fast-moving start-ups who have the opportunity to compete with major conglomerates in this dynamic field such as Microsoft, Siemens, Phillips and Bentley.

5. Genomics is a market set to grow from $20.1 billion in 2020 to $62.9 billion by 2028 through its key role in healthcare innovation and tailoring care to an individual patient while providing more data on diseases and human genetics. The World Health Organisation reports that gene sequencing was critical to the rapid development of COVID-19 tests and other tools used to manage the virus outbreak.

According to Pitchbook, investment capital in genomics companies has more than doubled in value per deal in 2021 over the previous year. So far in 2021, post-investment valuations have also more than doubled against the whole of 2020.  

Paul Stannard added: “The accelerated innovation since the COVID-19 pandemic is astonishing – some experts say we witnessed ten years’ growth in the last 18 months of the outbreak – giving us a glimpse of even greater possibilities, especially when some of these pacesetters, such as nanotech, genomics and Digital Twins are able to advance, accelerate and complement each other.

“If it is backed by astute and enlightened investment, our future is looking bright!”

Investors attracted by healthcare’s robot revolution

Can robot doctors and nurses ever replace humans? The jury is still out on that, but an artificial intelligence (AI) ‘robot revolution’ is already sweeping through healthcare. 

And even as debate rages in the UK over a post-COVID return to normal face-to-face consultations with family doctors, Dr Alan Stout, of the British Medical Association, said:

“It’s highly unlikely that we will have the desire or the capacity to return to a 100% face-to-face model. The phone-first model and the use of technology will allow surgeries to remain sustainable and accessible and provides a better service than pre-Covid.”

Caption – The future is here, with a ‘robot revolution’ sweeping through healthcare.

MarketsandMarkets says the AI in healthcare market was worth $4.9 billion in 2020 also creating substantially more value for an overall healthcare industry worth up to $410 billion per year by 2025.

Highlighted failures within traditional healthcare systems during the COVID-19 pandemic have driven AI advances on many fronts towards a better and more sustainable healthcare model.

For instance, health issues can be prevented in the first place by wearables and apps, which can make health recommendations for patients. Devices such as smartwatches and biosensors could also help detect health issues before conditions become critical.

But the next big step is virtual assistants, a market expected to take off in the next decade $2.8 billion by 2027 AI offers healthcare workers more time to focus on patient care and, with more patients willing to use home diagnostics, should enable a more decentralised healthcare system.

Paul Stannard, Chairman of the not-for-profit World Nano Foundation that fosters the nanotechnology sector, which has enabled so many healthcare breakthroughs, said:

“We may be resistant at first but virtual assistance and robotics are the future of healthcare. Japan is leading the way with a government-funded national initiative to develop data-driven AI and internet of things technologies that will increase the efficiency and quality of healthcare delivery.

“AI also offers more precision as it can automate the analysis of test results, while robotics can increase the success rate of surgeries.

Stannard also co-founded the Vector Innovation Fund, which recently launched a $300 million sub-fund for pandemic protection and future healthcare, and he added:

“This pandemic has taught us a lot; we can learn from the flaws it identified and maintain investment in technologies for a more sustainable future in healthcare and prepare and protect ourselves against future pandemics so that we can meet them in a timely, systematic, and calm manner.”  

Healthcare is just part of a trend towards more use of AI following the COVID outbreak. According to the Global AI Adoption Index 2021, 43% of IT professionals surveyed say their company has accelerated the rollout of AI due to the pandemic. An NHSX survey of 368 AI developers and procurers also found that the pandemic had helped accelerate progress in some areas.