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Making respiratory infections<br>a thing of the past<br>Respiratory viruses kill 1 million people a year, cost us $600B annually, disrupt everyday life, and periodically threaten civilization.<br>Recent breakthroughs may make it possible to develop and deploy broad-spectrum preventatives and air cleaning technologies that defend against common respiratory infections.<br>Intercept is a $500M philanthropic initiative that aims to radically reduce the burden of respiratory infections, and eventually eliminate them altogether.
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Why this matters
Today, we treat respiratory infections like the cold and influenza as a minor nuisance. The evidence increasingly suggests otherwise.<br>Healthy people spend roughly 15–25 days each year—about 5% of their lives 1—sick with respiratory infections like the common cold and flu.<br>Infections from common respiratory viruses can lead to severe outcomes. In 2021 alone, there were 12.8 billion infections globally. Annually, over 65 million of these progress to serious lower respiratory disease and account for ~7% of deaths from major causes in the U.S. 2<br>Respiratory infections raise our risk of serious illness, often years later. While researchers are still early in establishing these connections, it seems plausible that society has meaningfully underestimated the significance of seemingly benign infections on short and long-term health.<br>9.8x asthma risk by age 6 if infected with rhinovirus between birth and age 3 36.1x heart attack risk for 7 days after flu infection 44.5-5x dementia risk after severe influenza and pneumonia 5<br>2.6-4.1x Alzheimer’s risk after severe influenza and pneumonia 52.2-3x schizophrenia risk for infant if mother is infected by influenza during pregnancy 61.3x dementia risk after lower respiratory tract infection 7
Routine respiratory illness imposes a massive, persistent economic burden, driving 1–1.5% annual productivity losses—roughly $600B globally, or ~0.6% of global GDP 8—in non-pandemic years.<br>Early converging evidence from population-based administrative data studies suggests that severe prenatal and early postnatal respiratory infections might lead to reduced adult earnings and educational attainment later in life. 9<br>Achieving broad protection against respiratory pathogens would meaningfully reduce pandemic risk, 10 serving as a critical first line of defense—alongside air disinfection—against both natural outbreaks and increasingly accessible engineered biological threats.
Why now
Building on platforms from COVID and beyond<br>The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a wave of investment in vaccines and antivirals. A number of these platforms showed early promise, then stalled when funding dried up as effective vaccines were deployed and COVID waves began to moderate. A second opportunity sits in nearby fields, where modalities developed for other disease areas may point to new categories of broad-spectrum preventatives.<br>New modality approvals in infectious disease vs other areas
Infectious diseases
All other areas
Note: New technologies included: Monoclonal antibodies, Bispecifics, Antibody-drug conjugates, Therapeutic proteins & enzymes, Fusion proteins, Cell therapies (CAR-T), Gene therapies, Oligonucleotides (siRNA, ASOs), mRNA therapeutics<br>Source: Internally compiled data; spreadsheet available on request
New AI-enabled tools and datasets<br>New biological datasets and protein design tools may allow us to design new drugs commensurate with the complexity of viral antigenic diversity, as well as explore entirely new antiviral strategies.<br>Growth of biological datasets and key milestones
Genomics<br>(SRA / ENA)
Single-cell transcriptomics
Infectious disease genomic surveillance<br>(GISAID / COVID portals)
Immunology<br>(ImmPort, AIRR, immune repertoire)
Protein structure<br>(PDB + AlphaFold DB)
Note: All five lines should be treated as illustrative of the trend and scale rather than audited figures. Single-cell, infectious disease, and immunology data points are order-of-magnitude estimates derived from sequence counts x typical file sizes. Values were normalized to a 0-100 scale.<br>Source: Katz KS et al. (2022). Nucleic Acids Research 50(D1):D387–D390; ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/stats; GZ CELLxGENE Census; Human Cell Atlas Data Portal; Tabula Sapiens Consortium; GISAID; COVID-19 data portal; ImmPort; AIRR; RCSB PDB; AlphaFold Protein Structure Database
Increasing pandemic risks<br>The COVID-19 pandemic killed millions and cost trillions, despite years of warning from the public health and biosecurity communities. The key drivers of pandemics — land use change, climate change, and intensive animal agriculture — continue to rise, while rapidly accelerating AI capabilities may dramatically increase risks from man-made biological weapons.<br>Days to make a virus
Gene synthesis / ordering
Genome assembly
Culturing / Boot-up
Sequencing verification
Note: The time to generate poliovirus was derived from reports (Jennifer...