RIGHT Foundation held a briefing session on Thursday to explain the eligibility criteria for two ongoing project grants and share about 2023 co-funding projects.

Accordingly, the Product Development Award (PDA) is targeted at companies or research institutions developing vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic platforms for low- and medium-income countries (LMICs) to improve health equity. 

The Evidence Generation Award (EGA) aims to support critical analysis of digital health technologies implemented to improve population-level health and evaluate computer-aided detection (CAD) programs for the automated detection of tuberculosis (TB).

This was first announced last month by RIGHT Foundation CEO Hani Kim. The foundation is still accepting applications through the RIGHT Foundation's official website until Jan. 25, 2023.

In the PDA category, up to 4 billion won ($3.05 million) will be provided for the selected project and the EGA category supports up to 200 million won per task for research.

 For the PDA category, teams must include corporations or institution based in Korea while EGA teams must include an insitution based in a low- or middle-income country (LMIC).

In both cases, forming a team of joint research partners with overseas institutions is actively encouraged, Kim explained.

The RIGHT Foundation is a public-private entity with a three-way partnership split between the Korean government, Korean life science companies as industry partners, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Since its establishment in 2018, it funded 43 tasks with 51.7 billion won given to approximately 60 domestic and foreign institutions and companies. The majority of the foundation’s research fund support is dedicated towards diagnostics and vaccines accounting for 33 percent and 43 percent respectively with the remaining 10 and 14 percent attributed to digital health and therapeutics respectively. 

“We are targeting diseases that do not have much investment in the private sector right now,” explained RIGHT Foundation’s Chief Strategy Officer Lee Hoon-sang. “Korea's biomedical industry is very competent and presents a unique partner for resource-limited countries to develop vaccines or therapeutic diagnostic devices.”

Among the wide portfolio of projects, he mentioned the five most advanced candidates expected to achieve WHO prequalification (PQ) by 2027. These include a second-generation G6PD test from SD Biosensor, a typhoid conjugate vaccine with EuBiologics and PATH,  point of care testing (POCT) for multidrug-resistant TB from Bioneer and FIND, a low-cost hepA vaccine manufacturing platform by SK Bioscience and Univercells and a second-generation TB LAM assay from SD Biosensor and FIND.

Announcing the organization’s plans for next year, Kim said, “Next year, we would like to accumulate data that identifies the most marginalized areas in health and come to an agreement to actively reduce the gaps in health through potential strategic partners with CEPI, the African CDC, the Asian Development Bank, GAVI, UNICEF and more.”

She added that next year spring, there will be a further announcement regarding these partnerships.