NIH Launches 'Shark Tank' Competition to Ramp Up Coronavirus Testing

A nationwide scientific competition to find new tests to better detect the coronavirus may be able to provide quick, easy and accurate ones by the end of August, Francis Collins, M.D., director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is spearheading the effort, told a U.S. Senate committee Thursday.

In what Collins called a Shark Tank–type competition (a reference to the popular reality TV show for entrepreneurs), more than 1,000 mostly small businesses and academics have submitted proposals to tap into the $2.5 billion of federal money to fast-track new testing technologies. Expert review boards covering the scientific, clinical, regulatory and business sectors will quickly evaluate technology proposals to find the gems that show promise of combating COVID-19.

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The hope, Collins explained, is to develop the technology that can be produced in enough quantities to provide millions more tests to Americans each week by the end of the summer.

"At the NIH, we believe that putting the best minds in the world together is the only way to meet the challenge to bring this virus under control,” Collins said.

Once the review boards and the NIH identify the proposals they believe could be most successful, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will help ensure that enough tests can be produced to meet the demand.

"We need tests that don't require hours or days to determine results,” Collins told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Some senators — sitting more than 6 feet apart — were in a Capitol Hill hearing room Thursday; others participated remotely. Most of the people in the hearing room were wearing masks. “The new types of tests need to be sensitive enough to flag asymptomatic individuals who may have just become infected and don't even know it yet. And, above all, they need to be accessible to everyone."

HELP Committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., called the testing development effort a “mini Manhattan project” and said adequate testing is the only way to end the pandemic.

"Testing is necessary to identify the small number of those with the disease and those exposed to it, so they can be quarantined, instead of quarantining the whole country,” Alexander said. “Testing will help Americans traumatized by daily reports of the virus gain the confidence to go back to work and back to school."