Author:
Felicitas Colombo, MPA
As moderators of several discussions at the World Vaccine Congress, taking place from March 30 to April 2 in Washington, D.C., Vaccines Beat had the opportunity to speak with leading experts ahead of the event on the topic: “Vaccine Public–Private Partnerships for Pandemic Readiness & Biosecurity.” During the conversation, panelists opened a stimulating dialogue that will expand into a full panel session on April 1, focusing on the urgent need to establish pre-arranged agreements among key stakeholders before another global crisis emerges.
The panel:
Holger Kissel, Ph.D., serves as Senior Vice President Scientific Relations & Liaison at BioNTech. Being a part of the Company since 2013, he assumed this role in 2023. With an extensive background in business development and licensing, he is dedicated to advancing global health initiatives and fostering public-private partnerships.
In his previous roles as Vice President Business Alliances and Director Business Development at BioNTech, Holger played a pivotal role in establishing the Company’s extensive corporate and scientific network, resulting in numerous in- and out-licensing deals, including collaborations with Genentech and Pfizer. The latter resulted in the joint development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, Holger was responsible for managing key collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech companies as well as academic partners.
Nikki Romanik, MD, is the co-founder of BioRadar Public Benefit Corporation, an AI-powered biological intelligence infrastructure platform designed to detect emerging biological threats before they escalate into global crises She also serves as an Advisor to Network 20/20, a global leadership network addressing complex international challenges.
Dr. Romanik previously served at the White House as Special Assistant to the President, Deputy Director, and Chief of Staff for the inaugural Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR). In this role, she helped stand up the office and led U.S. preparedness and response efforts for pandemics, outbreaks, including mpox, COVID-19 and Marburg Disease Virus, operating at the intersection of science, policy, and politics.
Following her White House service, Dr. Romanik was a Distinguished Senior Fellow in Global Health Security at the Brown University School of Public Health.
Earlier in her career, she held senior leadership roles at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the World Health Organization, where she built durable public–private partnerships and navigated complex domestic and global policy environments.
She holds academic appointments at the Georgetown/MedStar Health National Center for Health Security and Resilience and the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center. A physician and policy strategist, Dr. Romanik is recognized for translating science into action, forging partnerships, and leading through complexity to advance global health security, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity.
Julie Barnes-Weise is the Executive Director of the nonprofit Global Healthcare Innovation Alliance Accelerator (GHIAA), a nonprofit company that develops, promotes and consults on the use of agreement provisions, access planning and negotiation strategies to increase expedited and equitable access to medical products, and has recently launched its expanded Equitable Access Toolkit.
Barnes-Weise is a lawyer, global health policy consultant, entrepreneur and Certified Licensing Professional. She has also been a senior consultant to CEPI and other funders and is a member of WHO’s TAG-MVAC (Technical Advisory Group on Market Access to Vaccines).
Barnes-Weise formerly held a faculty appointment in the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy and was Director of Business Development at Glaxo Wellcome (now GSK). She has decades of experience negotiating IP licenses, funding, development and alliance agreements as well as advising companies and institutions on partnering and negotiation strategies.
Shelly Malhotra is the Vice President of Global Access and External Affairs at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). She leads the effort to ensure future access to IAVI’s innovations and crafts external engagement and resource mobilization strategies to support IAVI’s core mission.
Malhotra has worked in global health for two decades, with a focus on harnessing public-private partnerships to support access to innovations for two decades. Previously, as the director of market access at TB Alliance, she oversaw launch planning and introduction for an innovative product development partnership for pediatric and adult TB regimens, including overseeing technical partnerships spanning 20+ high-burden countries to support introduction. Prior to her work with TB Alliance, Malhotra lived and worked in Cambodia, Thailand, and throughout the Asia Pacific region, where she led a range of global health, research, and capacity-strengthening initiatives with organizations including Hope Worldwide, AmeriCares, and the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery.
Jack Moss is a senior commercial leader who currently serves as Deputy Commercial Director for Major Programmes at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), where he leads commercial strategy and delivery for large-scale public health initiatives, including major vaccination programmes and supplier engagements. In this role, Jack applies extensive experience in procurement, commercial negotiation, and category leadership to support UKHSA’s critical work in health security and immunization delivery.
Before his current post, he built a career in commercial and supply-chain roles within the public sector, and holds business and professional qualifications including a BBA, MSc, MBA and MCIPS (Member of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply). He also actively shares insights on commercial leadership and national immunization programme contracting on professional networks like LinkedIn.
Lessons learned
The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally reshaped how the global health community approaches vaccine development, biosecurity, and pandemic preparedness. The rapid development of multiple COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year demonstrated the extraordinary potential of collaboration between different key stakeholders.
Yet the same crisis also exposed structural weaknesses in the global response, particularly inequities in vaccine access, fragmented funding structures, insufficient preparedness mechanisms, and ongoing conflict of interests.
“We operate in a global landscape where approaches to trade and supply resilience are evolving. The UK aims to further strengthen its thriving life sciences sector and ensure it has reliable access to the essential supplies needed to protect public health. It is important to consider this context when engaging in international cooperation, as there are often competing demands to manage,” says Moss.
At the center of the global vaccine response were public-private partnerships (PPPs), collaborative frameworks that combine public sector leadership with private sector innovation. These partnerships enabled governments and global health institutions to mobilize resources while leveraging the scientific expertise, manufacturing capacity, and research infrastructure of biotechnology companies.
Driven by the need to ensure national and international communities, governments, and all sectors of society are better prepared to prevent and respond more equitably to future pandemics, Member States of the World Health Organization adopted The Pandemic Agreement on 20 May 2025 at the Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly.
“The great loss of human life, disruption to households and societies at large, and impact on development are among the factors cited by governments to support the need for lasting action to prevent a repeat of such crises,” the agreement states.
At its core, the accord seeks to establish an international instrument under the WHO Constitution to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
The debate
The experience of COVID-19 has sparked renewed global debate about how such partnerships should be structured in the future. Experts from industry, academia, government, and international health organizations increasingly argue that pandemic preparedness cannot rely on ad-hoc collaborations formed during crises. Instead, sustainable partnerships must be built in advance, supported by clear incentives, robust financing mechanisms, and well-defined governance frameworks.
This perspective highlights a core challenge for future pandemic readiness: balancing urgent public health goals with the economic realities of vaccine research, development, and manufacturing.
“Pandemic preparedness frameworks cannot deliver on innovation without meaningful private-sector engagement. Companies must be at the table to define the conditions required to build, scale, and sustain new capabilities,” Dr. Romanik said.
Effective pandemic preparedness therefore requires mechanisms that enable governments and industry to mobilize resources rapidly when a new pathogen emerges. Because vaccine development typically requires years of research, billions of dollars in investment, and extensive manufacturing infrastructure, partnership frameworks must be established long before a crisis occurs. Yet, there’s so much changing in real time now.
“We need to plan for the next time everything is in flux by creating an agreed system, including its ‘conductor’, to coordinate not only a portfolio of pandemic products but also of participating organizations,” articulates Barnes-Weise.
At the heart of the debate is how PPPs must evolve to strengthen global biosecurity. Key issues include the role of pre-established frameworks for rapid mobilization of resources, strategies for aligning incentives across sectors, the implications of the WHO Pandemic Agreement, and the creation of resilient partnerships capable of delivering equitable vaccine innovation and access worldwide.
Barnes-Weise adds that “it’s important to create partnerships and commitments now, including an access plan to ensure that pandemic tools and products are both available and affordable for the needs we can anticipate.” She points to initiatives such as GHIAA’s open access MAPGuide, a resource designed to support the development of agreements including those for equitable outbreak response contracts.
Frameworks and Pre-Agreements
Several global institutions have emerged to facilitate vaccine PPPs. Organizations such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, and national biomedical agencies have built platforms that coordinate research funding, manufacturing partnerships, and procurement strategies.
These institutions help bridge the gap between early-stage research and large-scale vaccine deployment. However, experts emphasize that the most effective partnerships extend beyond funding agreements and instead foster long-term collaboration networks capable of sustaining innovation between health crises.
“PPPs are critical to developing vaccines for global health threats, but the challenge remains building sustainable business models that allow companies to justify large investments,” shares Dr. Kissel, who fostered BioNTech’s collaboration with Pfizer to develop one of the first COVID-19 vaccines in record time, demonstrating the value of these alliances.
Governments and international organizations are increasingly investing in advance procurement agreements, flexible funding mechanisms, and platform technologies that can be adapted rapidly to emerging pathogens.
One widely used mechanism is the advance purchase agreement (APA), through which governments commit to purchasing vaccines before regulatory approval if they meet established safety and efficacy standards. These agreements reduce financial uncertainty for manufacturers while accelerating vaccine development.
In parallel, governments are investing in strategic manufacturing partnerships to ensure surge production capacity during future health emergencies. For example, the UK Health Security Agency has established long-term agreements with vaccine manufacturers to maintain scalable production capabilities.
“Our strategic partnerships enable us to scale up to significant volumes of vaccine manufacturing, on shored within the UK, within twelve months if a pandemic occurs,” Moss shares.
Such agreements illustrate how governments can maintain preparedness while strengthening private-sector capacity to respond rapidly when new biological threats emerge.
“From a government perspective, PPP doesn’t always mean investing significant amounts of money or holding a contractual relationship. It can mean having really mature relationships that we can call upon at the points of need,” Moss explains.
He also reminds us that a partnership doesn’t always equal a contract. But when is a formal agreement needed to guarantee sustainability?
Aligning Incentives and Access
One of the most complex aspects of PPPs is aligning incentives between stakeholders and access commitments. Governments seek to protect public health, pharmaceutical companies must ensure financial sustainability, and global health organizations prioritize broad and equitable access to life-saving innovations.
Developing vaccines for emerging pathogens often involves significant financial risk, particularly when the potential commercial market is uncertain.
“How do we justify investing hundreds of millions into a vaccine if there is no clear market demand? Governments could help here with pull mechanisms,” notes Dr. Kissel.
Such “pull mechanisms” can include guaranteed procurement commitments, advance market incentives, and long-term funding arrangements that ensure vaccines will be purchased if they are successfully developed. Without such incentives, companies may struggle to justify investments.
Unclear market signals can therefore create major barriers to vaccine innovation. Many existing funding mechanisms support isolated stages of vaccine development but fail to establish a coherent end-to-end innovation ecosystem that connects research, development, manufacturing, and distribution.
“When the market signals aren’t clear, the mechanisms that usually incentivize innovation are not there. So innovative partnerships and catalytic funding need to step in to close that gap,” Malhotra emphasized.
These gaps can delay, or even prevent, promising vaccines from reaching global populations most in need. Ensuring equitable vaccine access requires that investments be coupled with explicit commitments from product developers, including tiered pricing strategies, technology transfer initiatives, and regional manufacturing partnerships that expand global production capacity.
Evolving Global Funding Roles and the WHO Pandemic Agreement
As mentioned, one of the most significant initiatives sparked by the global response to COVID-19 is the WHO Pandemic Agreement, which aims to strengthen international cooperation in pandemic preparedness, surveillance, and equitable access to medical countermeasures.
The agreement seeks to improve coordination in several areas:
Pathogen sharing and surveillance
Research collaboration
Technology transfer and manufacturing capacity
Equitable access to vaccines and treatments
A central component of the agreement is the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system, which is designed to ensure that countries sharing pathogen data receive fair access to the resulting vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments. However, negotiations remain complex due to competing national interests and the broader geopolitical challenges facing pandemic governance. Dr. Romanik emphasizes that the agreement must address longstanding tensions in global health.
“Countries that provide essential data frequently see limited benefit when vaccines are developed. The question is how to align incentives ensuring that data sharing is met with fair, timely access to the countermeasures it enables,” she explains.
Improved disease surveillance systems will also play a critical role in strengthening pandemic readiness. Early detection can significantly reduce the time required to develop vaccines and deploy public health interventions. Dr. Romanik’s work on BioRadar focuses on early detection of emerging and engineered biological threats by integrating metagenomic sequencing with real-time environmental, clinical, and digital data streams to identify anomalies before outbreaks escalate.
The value of this data is undeniable. But what constitutes an equitable balance for the countries that share pathogen data is not clear yet.
“The question is, can all of the negotiating sides agree that there’s enough of a balance that they can move forward and sign?” Barnes-Weise asks, referring to the limited remaining negotiating days to finalize the PABS component of the agreement by May 2026.
Platform Technologies and the 100-Day Vaccine Goal
Another key pillar of pandemic preparedness is investment in adaptable vaccine platforms, particularly mRNA technologies. These platforms enable scientists to design new vaccines rapidly once a pathogen’s genetic sequence becomes available, dramatically shortening development timelines.
Building on the lessons of COVID-19, global health organizations have increasingly embraced the concept of “100-day vaccine development.” This ambitious target aims to design, test, and begin deploying vaccines within three months of identifying a new pathogen.
Achieving this goal will require deep collaboration between academia, industry, regulatory agencies, and governments, once again underscoring the importance of strong PPP frameworks.
One of the most prominent examples of collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic was the partnership between BioNTech and Pfizer. BioNTech contributed its pioneering mRNA technology, while Pfizer provided global clinical trial expertise, regulatory support, and large-scale manufacturing capacity.
“Our background is science-driven business development and alliance management. Building partnerships across the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors made the COVID-19 vaccine collaboration possible,” says Dr. Kissel.
The success of the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine illustrates how strategic alliances within the private sector can significantly accelerate vaccine innovation and deployment during global health emergencies.
Regional Manufacturing and Supply Chains
One of the most important lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic has been the need to diversify global vaccine manufacturing capacity. As a result, there is a growing trend toward regional health security strategies.
“We are seeing countries and regions increasingly investing in their own manufacturing and health security systems, which creates tension between global cooperation and national priorities,” highlighted Malhotra, adding that balancing national self-reliance with global collaboration will therefore remain a key challenge for future pandemic preparedness.
Malhotra points out that pandemic preparedness requires long-term commitments rather than temporary crisis spending. Hence, PPPs must be supported by financing structures capable of sustaining research, manufacturing readiness, and global health infrastructure between pandemics.
Collaboration between stakeholders will enable vaccines to be developed, manufactured and distributed at rapid speed. However, fragmented funding structures, inequitable vaccine access, and insufficient preparedness mechanisms could undermine future health emergencies.
Strengthening pandemic preparedness will therefore require more robust partnership frameworks, ones that align incentives across sectors, support regional manufacturing capacity, and ensure equitable access to life-saving technologies.
As experts emphasize, successful pandemic response depends not only on scientific innovation, but on building partnership systems capable of sustaining that innovation over time. In a world where emerging infectious diseases remain a constant threat, resilient PPPs will continue to be among the most powerful tools for safeguarding global health and biosecurity.
