Pathogen Sharing: The Unspoken Condition for Pandemic Preparedness & Response

Emma Ross

Moderator; Senior Research Fellow, Chatham House

Emma Ross is the Senior Research Fellow in Chatham House’s Global Health Programme, where she leads the Institute’s health security portfolio.

Her research has focused on infectious disease control, including leading a weekly virtual expert panel discussion series on the COVID-19 pandemic; assessing global solidarity in responding to the pandemic; evaluating the approach to command & control of the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, considerations for building sustainable laboratories in Africa and options for strengthening transnational public health data sharing for greater health security.

She has also been for more than a decade the Managing Editor of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual (CCDM), a leading reference book on infectious diseases for public health specialists and epidemiologists that is updated on a rolling basis.

Prior to working at Chatham House, she headed news operations at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, after serving as a long-time medical correspondent at the Associated Press, for whom she reported from the frontlines of many of the major international health stories coming out of Europe, Africa and Asia – from outbreaks, global health challenges and debates in public health policy and medical ethics to advances in science and medicine.

She has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in the United States.

Jacqueline Castille

Nagoya Protocol & ABS Global Leader, Boehringer Ingelheim

Jacqueline Castille is the Global Leader of the Nagoya Protocol & Access and Benefit Sharing initiative for the Boehringer Ingelheim Group, ensuring the overall adherence to the related regulations requirements. Within this role, she represents the Company at the IFPMA strategic groups dedicated to these topics. She is also Senior Contract Manager for the French and Dutch Research and Development teams of Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, managing the implementation and the follow-up of some project-related agreements with external partners.

Jacqueline has a business school diploma and a French University degree (Master) in Intellectual property strategy and Innovation.

Boehringer Ingelheim is working on breakthrough therapies that transform lives, today and for generations to come. As a leading research-driven biopharmaceutical company, the company creates value through innovation in areas of high unmet medical need. Founded in 1885 and family-owned ever since, Boehringer Ingelheim takes a long-term perspective. More than 52,000 employees serve over 130 markets in the three business areas, Human Pharma, Animal Health, and Biopharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing.

Thomas Cueni

Director General, IFPMA

Thomas B. Cueni is Director General of IFPMA, the global association of pharmaceutical research companies, based in Geneva and is Secretary of the global Biopharmaceutical CEO Roundtable (BCR). In this capacity, Thomas Cueni was instrumental in creating the AMR Action Fund. A ground-breaking partnership, launched in 2020, that has raised nearly $1 billion to bring 2-4 new antibiotics to patients by 2030. These treatments are urgently needed to address the rapid rise of antibiotic-resistant infections – also called antimicrobial resistance, or AMR.

Thomas Cueni represents the innovative biopharmaceutical industry on the ACT Accelerator, the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a unique global collaboration to accelerate development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.

Thomas Cueni is Chair of the Business at OECD Health Committee, and also serves as Industry Co-Chair of the APEC Biopharmaceutical Working Group on Ethics. Furthermore, he is Chair of the Board of the cross-sectoral AMR Industry Alliance, a group committed to tackling the threat of antimicrobial resistance, which includes more than 100 companies and associations representing Rx pharma, generics, biotech, and diagnostics.

Prior to joining IFPMA he was Secretary General of Interpharma, the association of pharmaceutical research companies in Switzerland, and for many years was a member of the Board and Chair of a key committee of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.

Prior to his appointment with Interpharma, Thomas Cueni had a career as a journalist, inter alia as London correspondent for the “Basler Zeitung” and “Der Bund”, and he served as a Swiss career diplomat with postings in Paris (OECD) and Vienna (IAEA, UNIDO). He studied at the University of Basle, the London School of Economics, and the Geneva Graduate Institute for International Studies, and has Master degrees in economics (University of Basel) and politics (London School of Economics, LSE).

David Heymann

Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, LSHTM

David Heymann is a medical epidemiologist and Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at LSHTM, is a distinguished fellow at the Centre on Universal Health at Chatham House (London), and was chairman of the board of Public Health England from 2009 - 2015. From 1989 to 2009 he held various leadership positions in infectious diseases at WHO, and in 2003 headed the WHO global response to SARS in his role as executive director of communicable diseases. In 1976, after spending two years working in India on smallpox eradication, Heymann was a member of the CDC (Atlanta) team to investigate the first Ebola outbreak in DRC and stayed on in sub-Saharan Africa for 13 years in various field research positions on Ebola, monkeypox, Lassa Fever, malaria and other tropical diseases. Heymann has published over 250 peer reviewed articles and book chapters, is editor of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, and is an elected member of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy of Medicine.

Catherine McCarthy

Regulatory Compliance Manager, Wellcome Sanger Institute

Catherine McCarthy is Regulatory Compliance Manager at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK. The Institute is one of the premier centres of genomic discovery and understand in the world. It forms ambitious collaborations globally to provide the foundations for further research and transformative healthcare innovations. Pertinent areas of work comprise global-scale, pathogen surveillance programmes with vital aims of providing centres of disease control within endemic countries with real-time, implementable genetic information to combat the spread of disease.

Catherine’s focus and expertise is compliance with Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) legislation world-wide and enabling the legal and ethical acquisition of genetic resources accessed as part of research that the Institute undertakes. Remaining abreast of such a current and fast-moving subject area including its implementation presents its challenges but also great opportunity to shape the future.

John McCauley

Director, World Influenza Centre, The Francis Crick Institute, UK

Dr John McCauley is Director of the Worldwide Influenza Centre at the Francis Crick Institute in London. The Centre is one of the seven WHO Collaborating Centres for Influenza and forms part of the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS). Much of the work of the Centre is directed to monitoring the genetic, antigenic and drug resistance properties of virus samples from WHO National Influenza Centres from across the globe. Together with the other WHO Collaborating Centres for Influenza WHO recommendations are made twice-yearly for the composition for seasonal influenza vaccines and for the development of vaccine viruses from zoonotic influenza viruses for pandemic preparedness purposes.

The Francis Crick Institute was formed in 2015 and the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) became part of the Francis Crick Institute in April 2015. NIMR had worked with WHO on influenza since 1947 when, with WHO, a World Influenza Centre (WIC) was established. WIC was one of the two founding Collaborating Centres in the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network, now GISRS.

Prior to working at NIMR John McCauley was a group leader at the Institute for Animal Health in the UK, where he worked on influenza viruses of animals, Bovine Viral Diarrhoea Virus and Swine Vesicular Disease Virus.