Coronavirus: Anthony Pratt donates $1m for ‘silver-bullet solution’
Australia’s richest man has donated $1m to get it trial of HIV, arthritis drugs off the ground.
A trial of existing HIV and arthritis drugs that could stem the coronavirus tide will start next Monday with the help of a $1m donation from Australia’s richest person, Anthony Pratt.
The renowned Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne will begin the trial, planned for 60 hospitals across Australia, seeking a treatment for the virus to possibly kill it, stop it multiplying or helping the body overcome it.
Mr Pratt said COVID-19 needed “a call to arms” from Australia’s wealthiest people to contribute even more than in the manner they did for the bushfire crisis earlier this year.
“Bushfires unfortunately happen every year but this is a one-in-100-year event, so this is a call to arms for people to contribute more now. We are hoping for a silver-bullet solution. We need to do something, and preferably something within 60 days. On a wider level though, people who can should step up in this situation.”
In January, Doherty Institute scientists became the first lab outside China to decode the COVID-19 structure and distribute the data to labs worldwide, isolating the virus from a sample taken from a 58-year-old man who had arrived in Australia from China.
Doherty Institute director Sharon Lewin told The Australian the trial would involve the HIV drug Kaletra, sourced from AbbVie Inc, and arthritis drug Hydroxychloroquine, from Sanofi, both of which had shown promising results in treating COVID-19 in test tubes.
“What is unprecedented is we are talking about making this available to all Australians if possible, but it needs to be studied and the only way to do that is in a larger study,” Professor Lewin said.
“To get funding from the government for something like this can take weeks and months, and the importance of philanthropy in a situation like this is that it allows us to get going more quickly than that.”
Professor Lewin said the trial, which involved administering the two drugs for people in hospital but not yet in intensive care and the monitoring of patients who were not given the drugs, would involve 2440 people over 60 days in 60 hospitals across Australia and New Zealand and cost $6.7m.
Mr Pratt’s donation would bring the total raised for the trial to $3m, allowing it to at least get under way.
With the prospect of a vaccine about 18 months away, Professor Lewin said it was important work was done on potential ways to at least help treat people who had tested positive in the meantime.
“These are anti-viral drugs that we are using, and one of the benefits of their primary use is that they have helped, particularly in the case of the HIV drug, to stem the infectiousness of the virus.”
Mr Pratt was one of dozens of members of The List — Australia’s Richest 250 to donate to various bushfire causes in January, including the likes of John Gandel, Avi Silver and Eddie Hirsch, Lachlan Murdoch and Andrew Forrest, who made headlines with a $70m pledge in mid-January.
Australia’s richest person with an estimated fortune of $16.95bn, Mr Pratt said other wealthy individuals and families needed to undertake similar donations during the COVID-19 crisis.
Clive Palmer last week donated $1m to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital’s Coronavirus Action Fund and is also funding the manufacture or acquisition of a million doses of Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. Chinese billionaire Jack Ma has donated $2.15m to the Doherty Institute.
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