XPRIZE, OpenCovidScreen and a coalition of partners call on the global community to develop frequent, fast-turnaround, cheap, and easy-to-use screening tests to catch Covid-19 occurrences before they become outbreaks.
LOS ANGELES (July 28, 2020) — XPRIZE, the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, in collaboration with OpenCovidScreen, a non-profit founded by scientists and business leaders to drive needed innovation through “Open Science”, today launched the $5 million XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing competition to accelerate the development of high-quality Covid-19 testing that is low cost, easy to use, and fast-turnaround, enabling frequent testing.
The XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing competition will call on the world’s brightest, most innovative minds to develop new, low-cost testing solutions that range from testing devices with 15-minute results to distributed lab testing methods with “next morning” results. Frequent, fast-turnaround, easy-to-use testing enables effective data-driven tracing and isolating strategies. Most currently available Covid-19 tests are expensive, slow, invasive, and are supply-chain limited. XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing aims to meet the need to scale testing capabilities by 100-times past our current standard, the level of increase needed to more safely return to everyday activities.
“Competition is the key to innovation and XPRIZE is seizing this moment to challenge the best and brightest minds around the world to develop COVID-19 testing that is high-quality, affordable and accessible,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. “I look forward to seeing the breakthroughs that arise from this challenge and the countless lives that will be saved as a result.”
To amplify impact, a $50 million “COVID Apollo Project” led by experienced life sciences investors and company builders – including RA Capital, Bain Capital, Perceptive Advisors, Redmile Group, and Samsara Biocapital – will work with OpenCovidScreen, the XPRIZE community, and beyond to accelerate the best ideas, technologies, and innovations to market and scale them.
“Fast, affordable, and accessible testing is crucial to containing the Covid-19 pandemic and safely reopening schools, businesses and other vital institutions around the world,” said Anousheh Ansari, CEO of XPRIZE. “XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing is inspiring the best entrepreneurial and scientific teams to come together to work towards rapid, affordable Covid-19 testing at scale, and ultimately, getting the world up and running again.”
Teams can compete in one of the following four categories: At Home, Point-of-Care, Distributed Lab, or High-Throughput Lab. To ensure supply chain diverse solutions, entries are encouraged in a variety of underlying testing approaches (PCR, Isothermal/LAMP/RPA, CRISPR, Antigen-detection, Next Generation Sequencing, and other technologies). Entries will be judged on overall innovation of solution, appropriate performance, turnaround time, scaling properties and frequency enabled, ease-of-use and cost of solution.
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