The new Zoonoses Anticipation and Preparedness Initiative (ZAPI), part of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) public-private partnership, aims to enable swift response to major new infectious disease threats in Europe and throughout the world by designing new manufacturing processes (up to large scale) for delivering effective control tools (vaccines, antibodies/antibody-like molecules) against (re-)emerging zoonotic diseases with pandemic potential within a few months after the occurrence of first cases.
A zoonotic disease (or zoonosis) is any disease or infection that is transmissible from animals to humans. Zoonoses may be caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites. Example of zoonoses are Avian Influenza, Swine Influenza, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Rift Valley Fever, SARS, Salmonellosis, Anthrax, Brucellosis, leptospirosis, plague, toxoplasmosis...
The ZAPI project is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a large-scale public-private partnership between the European Union and the pharmaceutical industry association EFPIA.
A zoonotic disease (or zoonosis) is an infectious disease that is transmissible from animals to humans. Zoonosis such as SARS, MERS and most recently COVID-19 are occurring at an increasing frequency in Europe and other regions of the world, as a consequence of several driving factors (e.g. climate change, travel, trade). It becomes crucial to rapidly develop medical intervention tools for animals and humans.
