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Fast Grants

Fast Grants

Fast Grants is an American charity created to provide rapid grants for research related to COVID-19.

It was administered through Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.[1][2]

History

Fast Grants was founded in early April 2020 by George Mason University professor Tyler Cohen, Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, and University of California, Berkeley bioengineer Patrick Hsu.[1:1] The program received 4,000 applications in its first week,[3] and in less than a month, had “awarded $18 million to more than 100 researchers working on projects including several potential vaccines and treatments for COVID-19.”

Among the many projects that received grant funding was the TOGETHER Trial, including its review of ivermectin as an early COVID-19 treatment published March 30, 2022, in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).[4]

Organization

Name Position Notes
Tyler Cohen Co-founder George Mason University
Patrick Collison Co-founder Stripe
Patrick Hsu Co-founder University of California, Berkeley

Donors

Donors to Fast Grants include:[1:2][2:1]

  • Arnold Ventures
  • Audacious Project
  • Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
  • Chris Sacca
  • Crankstart Foundation
  • Crystal Sacca
  • Elon Musk
  • Fiona McKean
  • Jack Dorsey
  • John Collison
  • Julia Milner
  • Kim Farquhar
  • Patrick Collison
  • Paul Graham
  • Reid Hoffman
  • Schmidt Futures
  • Scott Farquhar
  • Tobias Lütke
  • Yuri Milner

Recipients

Recipients of grant funding from Fast Grants include:[2:2]

Name Affiliation Project
- Addgene For continuing to share critical reagents with researchers at minimal cost during the Covid-19 pandemic
Patricia Aguilar University of Texas For modeling age-dependent susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection in 3D human lung organoids
Hector Aguilar-Carreno Cornell University To use a novel viral membrane inhibitor to produce a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine
Wataru Akahata Kyoto University For the development of a Covid-19 vaccine specifically targeted to the receptor-binding domain of the viral S protein using expertise gained during successful development of anti-malaria and anti-chikungunya vaccines
James Antaki Cornell University For the collaborative effort with Accel Diagnostics to develop a point of care serological test for rapid quantification of antibody titer to monitor disease progression and strength of immune response
Susan Athey Stanford University For retrospective analyses designed to assess the benefit of off-label drug use, in order to help prioritize and guide subsequent randomized clinical trials
Michael Barry Mayo Clinic For the development of a single-cycle adenovirus vaccine and viral decoy against SARS-CoV-2
Mark Bathe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) For a collaborative effort with the Lingwood and Schmidt labs combining vaccine immunology and nanotechnology expertise to rapidly test and characterize COVID-19 vaccine candidates in high-throughput
John Bell Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) To create multiple vaccines for COVID-19 using novel strategies for delivering coronavirus proteins directly to the critical cells required to generate an effective immune response
Carolyn Bertozzi Stanford University For a collaboration of Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi, Dr. Catherine Blish and Dr. Marie Hollenhorst to identify minimally invasive predictive biomarkers for Covid-19 disease progression to improve scarce resource allocation
Lbachir BenMohamed University of California, Irvine For the development of an asymptomatic multi-epitope COVID-19 vaccine
Catherine Blish Stanford University To determine best practices for N95 mask decontamination that will sufficiently inactivate virus and allow mask reuse in a clinical setting
Jeff Biernaskie University of Calgary To study the immune basis of COVID-19 related acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDs) via longitudinal study of patients undergoing placebo and convalescent plasma treatment in order to inform evidence-based repurposing of targeted immunotherapies to improve outcomes for critically-ill patients affected by COVID-19
Pamela Bjorkman California Institute of Technology For electron tomography imaging of SARS-CoV-2 virions trapped in the act of fusion by novel fusion inhibitors
Jim Boonyaratanakornkit Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center To probe the human B cell repertoire for SARS-CoV-2-protective B cells from pre-immune individuals in order to guide vaccine and monoclonal antibody design against COVID-19
Gillian Booth University of Toronto To accelerate the CONNECT study (Covid-19 and diabetes: Clinical Outcomes and Navigated NEtwork Care Today) to define the relationship between diabetes and adverse COVID-19 outcomes and improve care for individuals with diabetes
Stephen Brohawn University of California, Berkeley To develop novel COVID-19 therapeutics that target coronavirus ion channels in collaboration with the Bautista and Adesnik labs
James Brian Byrd University of Michigan Medical School To support a randomized, controlled clinical trial testing whether continuation, or discontinuation of two common types of blood pressure medication leads to better outcomes in patients hospitalized with COVID-19
Ann Chahroudi Emory University School of Medicine To investigate cross-reactive, cross-neutralizing, and antibody-dependent enhancing (ADE) antibodies of circulating endemic coronaviruses
Amy Chung University of Melbourne To accelerate the characterization of antibodies from COVID-19 patients that are associated with rapid recovery compared to severe disease; and to identify potent monoclonal antibodies capable of inhibiting the virus, which will be prioritized for therapeutic development
Susan Daniel Cornell University To investigate the impact of FDA-approved calcium-modulating drugs on lessening COVID infection, based on their work identifying a role for calcium ions in virus entry
Brandon DeKosky University of Kansas For high-throughput screening of antibody responses in COVID-19 patients for therapeutic discovery and to accelerate vaccine design
Shokrollah Elahi University of Alberta Understanding the immune correlates of protection in infected individuals with a mild form of COVID-19 versus those with the severe form of the disease is essential for therapeutic interventions or vaccine design
John Eikelboom McMaster University For the ACT program design using innovative and adaptive methodology to find a safe, effective treatment to slow the progression of COVID-19 across 80 sites in 8 countries over 6 months
Barbara Engelhardt Princeton University For creating a national database of COVID+ patient data and studying it to gain a better understanding of disease trajectory, improved hospital resource allocation and the acceleration of clinical trials
Joaquin Espinosa University of Colorado To identify and test therapeutic strategies to safely attenuate the damaging hyperinflammatory response caused by SARS-CoV-2, including repurposing of approved drugs
Laura Esserman University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) For the ‘I-SPY for COVID-19’ Platform Trial to Reduce Mortality and Ventilator requirements for critically ill patient in collaboration with Dr. Carolyn Calfee and Dr. Kathleen Liu
Tracy Fisher Tulane University To investigate the pathogenesis of COVID-19 in the development of a relevant animal model in order to advance our understanding of the disease process and for safe and efficacious therapeutic and vaccine development
Steven Marc Friedman University Health Network (UHN), University of Toronto For a comparative study to validate saliva as a test for SARS-CoV-2, as an alternative to nasopharyngeal swab testing and its associated problems, including depletion of swabs and personal protective equipment, and risk of nosocomial infection from close proximity of health care worker and patient being tested
Judith Frydman Stanford University For using their combined expertise in virology and in multisubunit protein production to engineer virus-like particles (VLPs), which will allow for rapid testing of the neutralization capacity of recovered patient sera (in collaboration with the Blish lab) or designed antibodies targeting the S protein (in collaboration with the Wells Lab)
Patrick Giguère University of Ottawa For the discovery of CoV-2 particle entry in absence of ACE2 and genome-wide gain-of-function screening to identify new secondary receptors/co-receptors/auxiliary proteins that facilitate viral entry/fusion
Amy Gladfelter University of North Carolina To analyze the role of phase separation in packaging of the viral genome and as a target for therapeutic small molecules
Douglas Goetz Ohio University To determine the potential of GSK-3 inhibitors to diminish the cytokine storm associated with COVID-19
Anne Goldfeld Boston Children's Hospital To repurpose an FDA-approved oral drug to inhibit SARS-CoV-2
Ewan Goligher University Health Network (UHN), University of Manitoba To support the Antithrombotic Therapy to Ameliorate Complications of COVID-19 (ATTACC) trial. This international, multicenter, adaptive, open-label randomized clinical trial will examine the impact of therapeutic anticoagulation in comparison to standard venous thromboprophylaxis on the risk of intubation and death in hospitalized patients with COVID-19
Brigitte Gomperts University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) For using a 3D human lung organoid model that is infected with SARS-CoV-2 to screen for new therapies to treat COVID-19 and reduce lung injury
Lisa Gralinski University of North Carolina To identify combination antiviral and immune modulatory therapies that improve the outcome of patients with COVID-19 induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)
Nathan Grubaugh Yale School of Public Health For developing new testing strategies and utilizing virus genomic sequencing to support data-driven decision making
Jeremy Hirota McMaster University To correlate host transcriptome profile from clinical nasal swabs from positive and negative COVID-19 cases with clinical outcomes
Shirley Hsin-Ju Mei Ottawa Hospital Research Institute For the TURQUOISE Ottawa COVID-19 study profiling immune responses of COVID-19 patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), with a focus on the potential immunomodulatory function of mesenchymal stem cells
Eva Harris University of California, Berkeley To perform a randomized, representative, community-based, longitudinal study of short and long-term spread, asymptomatic infection rates, disease risk modifying factors and effects of non-pharmacological interventions for COVID-19 in the Bay Area
John Higgins Massachusetts General Hospital To characterize the immunologic and inflammatory state and dynamics of patients with COVID-19 using routine clinical laboratory data and develop methods to provide risk stratification and to generate mechanistic hypotheses regarding disease progression
Krystalyn Hudson Columbia University To elucidate which antibody characteristics in convalescent plasma lead to COVID-19 patient symptom improvement and recovery
Patrick Hsu University of California, Berkeley For the discovery of diagnostic and actionable biomarkers of COVID-19
Akiko Iwasaki Yale University To elucidate the single cell transcriptional profiles of infected tissues from COVID-19 patients
Smita Iyer University of California, Davis To investigate convalescent plasma therapy for COVID-19 in a rhesus model
Benjamin Izar Columbia University For modulating the hyperinflammatory myeloid cell response to COVID-19 infection
Peter Jackson Stanford University School of Medicine For elucidating a newly discovered mechanism by which the SARS-CoV-2 virus binds to its receptor(s) on trachea and nasal epithelium and defining a new drug target to block viral uptake and spread
Jingyue Ju Columbia University To rapidly research and develop nucleotide analogues that inhibit SARS-CoV-2 polymerase as therapeutics for COVID-19
Naftali Kaminski Yale University To perform a clinical trial assessing the efficacy of sobetirome in reducing the requirements for mechanical ventilation and mortality of moderate to severe hospitalized COVID-19 patients
Kevin Kain University Health Network (UHN) For a three-month multi-site randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study to assess safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) in the prevention of COVID-19 infections in high-risk Health Care Workers
Yoshihiro Kawaoka University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine Development of Syrian Hamsters as a Covid-19 model to test the Protective Efficacy of a Whole-Inactivated Vaccine
Michael Kay University of Utah To discover and characterize novel D-peptide viral entry inhibitors as drug candidates to prevent and treat COVID-19
Nevan Krogan University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) For identifying SARS-CoV-2-Human Protein-Protein Interactions and evaluating them as potential therapeutic targets
Ronald Levy Stanford University To generate a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 using a novel polymer for mRNA protection
Michael Lin Stanford University For developing a live-cell test for the activity of a key protein from SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 virus, and testing of a set of existing drugs for ability to disrupt this protein’s function
Mark Looney University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) To explore the pathogenic role of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) in COVID-19 by testing a strategy to dismantle NETs using a novel therapeutic to ameliorate acute lung injury
Hiten Madhani University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) To elucidate the pathogenesis by SARS-CoV-2 using reverse genetics in yeast
Jonathon Maguire University of Toronto For the COVID-19 Study of Children and Families, a longitudinal observational study to evaluate the key epidemiological characteristics and spectrum of disease severity of COVID-19 among parents and children
Rajeev Malhotra Massachusetts General Hospital To identify novel risk factors that determine which COVID-19 patients are at highest risk (e.g., those needing ICU care or to be on a ventilator) or who develop cardiac injury, with a particular focus on baseline vascular abnormalities
Amanda Martinot Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine For comparison of pre-clinical animal models for vaccine and therapeutic development and the basic immunology and virulence determinants underlying host-pathogen interactions
Grant McFadden Arizona State University To develop a live intranasal COVID-19 vaccine to generate both humoral (especially respiratory mucosal) and cellular acquired immune responses against SARS-CoV-2, based on a recombinant version of an attenuated nonhuman poxvirus called myxoma virus that has been engineered to co-express the four SARS-CoV-2 proteins (S, N, M and E) needed to produce secreted non-infectious virus-like particles that antigenically mimic the complete SARS CoV-2 virus
Allison McGeer Sinai Health System To test whether existing antivirals can be used to control outbreaks of COVID-19 in nursing homes
Roman Melnyk University of Toronto, SickKids For high-throughput screening of repurposed FDA-approved drugs for their efficacy to prevent SARS-CoV2 entry by modifying endosomal pH and testing in preclinical hamster and ferret models of Covid-19 in collaboration with the Kozak and Falzarano labs
Miriam Merad Mount Sinai Medical Center To comprehensively characterize the immunological response to SARS-CoV-2 and identify the factors that control the severity of COVID-19 disease based on a comprehensive and longitudinal COVID-19 BioBank of Mount Sinai’s very large COVID-19 patient population
Edward Mills McMaster University To summarize rapidly emerging clinical research evidence and generate comparative efficacy and safety profiles for candidate interventions
Keith Mostov University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) To develop recombinant secretory immunoglobulin A antibodies to the SARS CoV-2 virus and use them to provide passive protection against infection
Elke Muhlberger Boston University To test compounds known to activate the oxidative stress response pathways for their potential as inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2
Anders Näär University of California, Berkeley To develop anti-viral COVID-19 therapeutics based on direct targeting of the viral RNA genome using LNA anti-sense oligonucleotides
Mihai Netea Radboud University Medical Center To support a randomized clinical trial to investigate whether vaccination with BCG is able to decrease the incidence and severity of COVID-19 infection in elderly individuals
Daniel Nomura University of California, Berkeley For a collaborative effort of the Nomura, Murthy, Cate, Schaletzky, and Stanley labs to develop small molecule Covid-19 antivirals drugs
Paul Norman University of Colorado To analyze genetic variation of critical immune system molecules in the differential response to SARS-COV-2 infection. These are the highly polymorphic HLA genes that are central to innate and adaptive immunity, and KIR genes, whose diversity modulates natural killer cell functions. We will examine how this diversity correlates with disease severity and with specific antibody production
- Center for Open Science To accelerate COVID-19 research by improving transparency of related registrations, data, materials, and preprints on the Open Science Framework (OSF.io) for discovery and consumption by researchers and other services
Elizabeth Ogburn Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health For developing the COVID-19 Collaboration Platform to bring disparate research teams working on the same clinical research questions together to share protocols, data, and evidence. Outside of a few centrally organized trials, most COVID-19 randomized clinical trials are small and/or redundant—and it's only by aggregating evidence across these trials that we will learn how to best treat COVID-19
Melanie Ott University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) For a joint Gladstone/Berkeley project by the labs of Melanie Ott (Gladstone Institutes), Dan Fletcher (University of California, Berkeley) and Jennifer Doudna (UC-Berkeley/Gladstone Institutes) to develop a CRISPR-based at-home and point of care COVID-19 diagnostic device that leverages existing cell phone technology and allows for wide-scale data gathering and contact tracing
Chul Park University of Toronto To cost-effectively modify N95 grade (and non-N95 grade) mask surfaces from hydrophilic (to which respiratory aerosols/droplets adhere) to hydrophobic (repelling respiratory aerosols/droplets), to increase their lifespan
Jerry Pelletier McGill University To identify the most potent compound from a class of rocaglates for activity against SARS-CoV-2. Our previous work has shown that these compounds are effective against the non-pathogenic coronavirus 229E strain
Bradley Pentelute Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) To develop safe and effective peptides for prophylactic treatment and rapid early therapeutic intervention against COVID-19 infection
Marion Pepper University of Washington For studying how immunity, or protection from subsequent Covid-19 disease, forms in individuals and how it can be used to develop antibody-based therapeutics
Nikolai Petrovsky Flinders University For a phase 1 clinical trial to test the efficacy of a recombinant protein-based Sars-CoV vaccine with Advax-SM adjuvant, based on expertise gained during SARS-CoV vaccine development
Rosalind Picard Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) To reduce asymptomatic spread by developing a weable sensor and algorithm that alerts the wearer when signals of a likely early infection are present prior to normal symptom onset
Dylan Pillai University of Calgary To further develop a clinically validated COVID diagnostic point-of-care test
Hidde Ploegh Harvard University To pursue targeted delivery of Covid-19 coronavirus antigens to antigen presenting cells in the form of nanobody-antigen adducts in the presence of approved adjuvants to elicit protective B- and T-cell (inluding CD8) responses as a possible vaccine strategy
Angela Rasmussen Columbia University For the longitudinal study of COVID-19 progression in non-human primate models to identify potential disease-modifying pathways
Brian Raught University Health Network To use two cutting-edge screening technologies to identify new drug targets for the treatment of COVID-19, and the identification of FDA-approved drugs with activity against SARS-CoV-2
Jeffrey Ravetch Rockefeller University To develop human ACE2 transgenic mice in strains that express all classes of human FcγRs to study the mechanisms of antibody-mediated protection against Covid-19 infection
Charles Rice Rockefeller University To develop SARS-CoV-2 replicons that can be used for high throughput screens at BSL2 containment, and to use genetic knockdown and knockout technology to identify host factors required by SARS-CoV-2 that can be targeted to treat COVID-19
Davide Robbiani Rockefeller University To rapidly identify a human monoclonal antibody that potently neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 and that is suitable for clinical development for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 based on convalescent serum screening
Erica Ollmann Saphire La Jolla Institute for Immunology To scale up protein production in order to compare and advance antibody therapeutics against COVID-19 around the world through our international consortium
Ansuman Satpathy Stanford University To identify the cellular and molecular basis for durable immunity to SARS-CoV-2, with a focus on the identification of T cell receptor and antibody sequences that are shared among virus controllers and the identification of immune dysfunction in COVID-19 that could be treated with existing FDA-approved drugs
Jacqueline Saw Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) For evaluating the use of cardiac CT angiography (CCTA) to study myocardial injury in COVID-19 patients
Julia Schaletzky University of California, Berkeley Dr. Julia Schaletzky, Prof. Sarah Stanley and their team at the UC Berkeley Drug Discovery Center work on a repurposing approach, discovering if compounds with existing safety data in humans can be used to combat COVID-19 infection
Katherine Seley-Radtke University of Maryland The Seley-Radtke group has developed a series of flexible nucleoside analogues ("fleximers") that have exhibited potent activity against epidemic (i.e. SARS and MERS), and endemic (i.e., NL63) human coronaviruses (CoVs). The Fast Grant will help advance our synthetic efforts as well as to fastrack our preclinical animal studies against SARS-CoV-2 and CoVID-19
Timothy Sheahan University of North Carolina To transcriptionally and serologically profile blood from COVID-19 patients to determine the molecular signatures associated with a spectrum of disease severities. These studies will expand our knowledge of COVID-19 pathogenesis and biomarkers of disease
Sachdev Sidhu University of Toronto For the discovery of human antibodies blocking ACE2 binding by the viral S protein through screening of libraries of billions of human antibodies and their further validation to move them towards clinical trials as an antiviral drug to fight COVID-19 directly
Matthew Spitzer University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) For discerning immune cell signaling states associated with disease escalation in COVID-19 based on prospective patient samples in order to identify therapeutic targets to modulate inflammation in COVID-19 patients
Sarah Stanley University of California, Berkeley For testing of repurposed antiviral compounds in an in-vivo disease model
Erec Stebbins German Cancer Research Center To create a COVID-19 vaccine through a novel immunotherapeutic platform
Alice Ting Stanford University For the development of non-PCR point-of-care tests for COVID-19 infection, based on engineered peroxidase reporters
Alain Townsend University of Oxford To characterize monoclonal antibodies to Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 from convalescent human donors for their binding, neutralization and structural properties
David Veesler University of Washington To develop novel COVID-19 therapeutics that target SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein in collaboration with the Baker Lab
Kliment Verba University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) To accelerate structure based drug discovery (including biologics) by bringing atomic details to host-viral complexes through the QCRG Structural Biology Consortium
Bert Vogelstein Johns Hopkins University Clinical trials to determine whether prazosin, a drug already widely used for common medical conditions, can prevent cytokine storms and severe disease in COVID-19 patients when given early after infection
Arthur Wallace University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco VA Medical Center To investigate ACE-I, ARB and type 5 PDE-I drugs in the context of ARDS and microvascular dysfunction in Covid-19 patients
Bruce Wang University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) To generate a single cell resolution spatial atlas of SARS-CoV-2 infection across multiple tissues in patients with severe COVID-19
Taia Wang Stanford University Wang and her group are studying molecules that correlate with immunity against COVID-19. Their studies focus on defining a protective antibody response, and they will investigate whether antibodies have a role in determining the severity of COVID-19. The overarching goal of this work is to guide the development of vaccines and monoclonal antibody therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2
Tania Watts University of Toronto To investigate the the diversity and longevity of T cell immunity to SARS-COV2 through longitudinal study of Covid-19 patients
Kipp Weiskopf Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research For the discovery of drugs that inhibit macrophage activation for use in severe cases of COVID-19. These drugs may suppress cytokine storm, hyperinflammation, and pulmonary infiltration to prevent respiratory failure
Craig Wilen Yale University To use state-of-the-art technologies including organoid culture and single-cell sequencing to identify the cell types infected by SARS-CoV2 and to reveal how the virus disturbs these cells to cause disease
Paul Yager University of Washington For developing an isothermal point of care diagnostic test to detect Sars-CoV-2
Michael Yin Columbia University To investigate the relationship between systemic exposure to hydroxychloroquine and therapeutic efficacy as well as side effects in COVID-19 patients
Qian Zhang Rockefeller University For the global COVID Human Genetic Effort, to search for monogenic etiologies for rare individuals naturally resistant to SARS-CoV-2 infections, as well as young and previously healthy individuals who suffered from life-threatening COVID-19

  1. Hobson, W. (2020, April 29). Scientists wait months for coronavirus research grants. This economist is trying to fix that. Washington Post. http://archive.today/2020.04.30-192113/https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/scientists-wait-months-for-coronavirus-research-grants-this-economist-is-trying-to-fix-that/2020/04/29/b5c8a3e0-896e-11ea-9dfd-990f9dcc71fc_story.html ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Home. Fast Grants. Retrieved December 23, 2021, from http://archive.today/2021.12.23-005332/https://fastgrants.org/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Else, H. (2021). COVID “Fast Grants” sped up pandemic science. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02111-7 ↩︎

  4. Reis, G., Silva, E. A. S. M., Silva, D. C. M., Thabane, L., Milagres, A. C., Ferreira, T. S., dos Santos, C. V. Q., Campos, V. H. S., Nogueira, A. M. R., de Almeida, A. P. F. G., Callegari, E. D., Neto, A. D. F., Savassi, L. C. M., Simplicio, M. I. C., Ribeiro, L. B., Oliveira, R., Harari, O., Forrest, J. I., Ruton, H., & Sprague, S. (2022). Effect of Early Treatment with Ivermectin among Patients with Covid-19. New England Journal of Medicine, 386(18). https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa2115869 ↩︎