Ebola has been spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda for over 100 days now, the deadliest and fastest-moving outbreak DRC has ever recorded. A new report explains why the world is struggling to catch up: the antiviral pipeline meant to fight the next pandemic has gaping holes in it.
The INTREPID Alliance, a nonprofit consortium of biopharmaceutical companies, released the fifth edition of its Antiviral Clinical and Preclinical Development Landscape this week, along with an updated interactive pipeline tool, based on publicly available data through January 2026. It tracks small-molecule antivirals in development across the 14 viral families health authorities consider top pandemic threats. The picture isn’t good.
Where the pipeline stands across 14 priority viral families
Only eight disease indications are in clinical trials, across just six of the 14 priority viral families, including COVID-19, influenza, dengue, and Lassa fever, meaning realistic new treatments are still four to five years out at best. The 14 families themselves read like a checklist of the pathogens biosecurity professionals worry about most: alongside Coronaviridae and Orthomyxoviridae (influenza), the list includes Filoviridae (Ebola and Marburg viruses), Arenaviridae (Lassa fever and other hemorrhagic fever viruses), Nairoviridae (Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever), Phenuiviridae (Rift Valley fever and SFTSV), Poxviridae (mpox and smallpox), and Togaviridae (chikungunya), among others, many of them CDC or USDA select agents or on WHO’s priority pathogen list.
Eleven of the 14 families have candidates in earlier preclinical work, but between typical failure rates and the years clinical testing takes, many dangerous viruses could stay untreatable for a long time. Three families have nothing in the pipeline at all, neither clinical nor preclinical: Adenoviridae, Hantaviridae, and Peribunyaviridae.
What the Ebola outbreak reveals about the cost of these gaps
The current Ebola outbreak shows what these gaps cost. No approved treatment or vaccine exists for this filovirus variant. Even so, the pipeline isn’t empty for filoviruses generally: obeldesivir, developed by Gilead Sciences, is now in Phase 2 trials for Ebola-Sudan, Marburg, and Ebola infections, one of the report’s few concrete signs of movement. Companies scrambled to test compounds, some using trial protocols prepared in advance, but a thin pipeline and a hard operating environment have kept the outbreak from being contained.
“Companies are stepping up to respond to the current Ebola outbreak in DRC but are starting from a limited pipeline,” said James Anderson, Chair of the INTREPID Alliance Board and Executive Director of R&D Innovation at IFPMA. “Today’s report underlines just how much more there is to be done.”
There has been some incremental progress. Three new antiviral compounds won regulatory approval for influenza since the last edition, though none for COVID-19. And indication-expansion evaluations, testing existing approved or investigational drugs against additional diseases, have grown, with favipiravir and remdesivir now under evaluation against a combined 20 different viral indications. John C. Pottage, Jr., the Alliance’s Lead Scientific Consultant, said the tool helps identify broad-spectrum compounds worth evaluating before the next crisis, not during one, the kind of head start the 100 Days Mission is built around: having safe, effective treatments ready within 100 days of any new outbreak.
The report also points to a few funding commitments meant to close these gaps: a $100 million BARDA Smart Antiviral Prize targeting broad-spectrum compounds against Togaviridae and Flaviviridae, a HORIZON Europe program funding development of similar broad-spectrum antivirals, and a €20 million commitment from the EU’s HERA authority aimed at producing at least two new dengue treatments, notable given that dengue is currently the most common viral infectious disease globally by case count, according to Airfinity data cited in the report.
INTREPID is also backing a new Therapeutics Development Coalition, launched in June 2026 with the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat, CEPI, FIND, DNDi, and Unitaid, aimed at keeping R&D funded between outbreaks rather than only during them.
The report arrives as talks over the WHO Pandemic Agreement’s Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing system remain stalled. At the center of the dispute is a requirement that participating manufacturers commit, in legally binding contracts with WHO, to setting aside 20 percent of their real-time production of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics during a declared pandemic, half as an outright donation and half at affordable prices, in exchange for rapid access to a pathogen’s genetic sequence data.
A stalled negotiation over who benefits from the next breakthrough
A bloc of roughly 100 low- and middle-income countries has pushed for these commitments to be mandatory, arguing it is the only way to avoid a repeat of COVID-19, when vaccines developed using pathogen data from the Global South were largely hoarded by wealthier nations. Industry groups including IFPMA and BIO counter that binding production-sharing contracts negotiated in advance of knowing whether a given compound will even work could slow the kind of fast, voluntary mobilization industry mounted in the early days of the Bundibugyo response, when firms moved on existing trial protocols within days of the emergency declaration. For now, INTREPID’s data offers a clear picture of how much work remains, and where early funding commitments are starting to take aim, before the next outbreak hits.
The full report and interactive toolbox are available at the INTREPID Alliance website.
Sources and further reading:
INTREPID Alliance Data Show Viral Threats Are Outpacing Global State of Readiness – INTREPID Alliance
This content was researched and sourced by Global Biodefense editors and reported with Claude AI assistance for drafting and editing.