In 2024, the WHO R&D Blueprint team established the Collaborative Open Research Consortia (CORCs) to address fragmented and predominantly reactive research efforts for priority pathogens. CORCs bring together global, cross-disciplinary networks spanning academia, public health institutions, and industry to align research agendas, share data, and strengthen preparedness-driven R&D across pathogen families.
The Filovirus CORC focuses on WHO R&D Blueprint priority pathogens and prototype pathogens from the Filoviridae family, including Ebola virus and Marburg virus, which cause severe viral hemorrhagic fevers and recurrent outbreaks. Coordinated by ANRS Emerging Infectious Diseases as a WHO Collaborating Centre, the Filovirus CORC is responsible for updating the WHO AFIRM (Accelerating Filovirus Research and Medical Countermeasures) Strategy Roadmap 2021–2031, initially developed by the MARVAC consortium. Its mandate remains unchanged: to identify key research priorities and guide the generation of knowledge and tools needed to strengthen preparedness and response to future filovirus outbreaks. Significant progress has already been made, including the ongoing development of standardized CORE protocols for filovirus vaccine and therapeutic trials, efforts to accelerate the deployment of candidate vaccines during outbreaks, and strengthened global collaboration between research institutions, health authorities, and affected communities.
Throughout 2024 and 2025, the CORC Filovirus convened a series of global consultations involving experts in virology, ecology, epidemiology, diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, disease modelling, and social sciences. These discussions, combined with an extensive review of the scientific literature, informed the development of the Filovirus R&D Roadmap. This document outlines the rationale for prototype pathogen selection, synthesizes the current state of knowledge across key domains, and identifies major challenges, gaps, and operational needs. It also proposes strategic short-, medium-, and long-term research priorities to guide coordinated global efforts aimed at improving preparedness and accelerating the development of medical and public health countermeasures against filoviruses.
Please submit your comments by 30 May 2026 after which the public consultation will be closed. For any specific questions related to the consultation, please contact corc.filovirus@anrs.fr