News Releases

At White House Roundtable, Plasma Industry Leader & CSL CEO Paul Perreault Urges People to Donate Plasma in the Fight Against COVID-19

• On behalf of the CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance and other plasma companies, Perreault urges people who have recovered from COVID-19 to consider donating plasma. To learn how and where to donate plasma, please visit TheFightIsInUs.org.

• The more convalescent plasma the industry collects – and the more quickly it does so – directly influences the timeline to deliver a potential hyperimmune globulin for COVID-19.

• The clinical trial, sponsored by The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in which the CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance will participate is expected to begin soon.

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Washington, D.C., July 30, 2020 – At today’s White House Roundtable, plasma industry leader and CSL CEO Paul Perreault urged people who have recovered from COVID-19 to consider donating plasma toward the development of a potential hyperimmune globulin to treat people with serious complications from COVID-19.

Paul Perreault, CEO and Managing Director, CSL Limited, (second from right) speaks on the need for plasma donations to help develop a potential COVID-19 therapy during a roundtable discussion at the American Red Cross National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on July 30, 2020. Also pictured, from left: U.S. President Donald Trump; Gail McGovern, Chief Executive Officer, American Red Cross; U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar; and Stephen Hahn, Commissioner, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Photo credit: Shutterstock

Representing the plasma industry, Perreault pointed to the unprecedented CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance industry collaboration which was co-founded by CSL Behring and Takeda this year to accelerate the development of a plasma-derived hyperimmune globulin therapy for COVID-19. The clinical trial, sponsored by The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in which the CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance will participate is expected to begin soon.

“The plasma industry has created an unprecedented partnership of world-leading companies at the outset of the pandemic in the CoVIg-19 Alliance and Coalition of Coalitions to help develop a reliable, scalable and sustainable plasma therapy to treat COVID-19,” said Perreault. “The amount of therapy we can produce is directly tied to the number of people who donate plasma — even those who aren’t sure, or don’t even know, that they have had the virus. So today is a call to action for everyone to donate plasma and help us in the fight against COVID-19.”

Perreault said the plasma industry has dedicated its leadership, expertise and resources to the fight against COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. Today, the industry asked the White House for help with further accelerating the development of a hyperimmune – particularly encouraging recovered COVID-19 patients to donate plasma.

“We are all in this together,” Perreault said. “As an industry, we would also like to thank the President and the Administration for their support in encouraging plasma donations and for the partnership that is critical to enabling the potential hyperimmune to treat people experiencing serious complications from COVID-19.”

How you can help: Donate plasma

A coalition of world-leading medical and research institutions, blood centers, life science companies, technology companies, philanthropic organizations, and COVID-19 survivor groups has come together to support the rapid development of potential new therapies for patients with COVID-19. Working together under the "The Fight is in Us" campaign, the coalition is seeking to mobilize tens of thousands of people in the United States who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate their blood plasma. Donating blood plasma is a generally safe and proven process.

Individuals who have recovered from COVID-19, or know someone who has, can visit TheFightIsInUs.org to understand if they may be eligible to donate and find a nearby blood or plasma donor center using a simple self-screening tool. The coalition offers more than 1,500 locations at which COVID-19 survivors can choose to donate.

About the CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance

In an effort to help fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, a new alliance was created in April 2020 to help develop a potential plasma-derived therapy for people at risk for serious complications from COVID-19. The CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance brings together world-leading plasma companies to work on the development of an investigational unbranded polyclonal anti-SARS-CoV-2 hyperimmune globulin medicine with the potential to treat patients who are at risk for serious complications from COVID-19.

The “I” and “g” in CoVIg-19 stand for immune globulin, which the CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance will use to concentrate the antibodies into a potential medicine. The Alliance, formed by CSL Behring and Takeda, also includes the leading-edge expertise of founding members Biotest, BPL, LFB, and Octapharma. Industry members ADMA Biologics, BioPharma Plasma, GC Pharma, Liminal BioSciences and Sanquin. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is providing advisory support. Microsoft is providing technology including the Alliance website and the Plasma Bot for donor recruitment. Organizations including Pall and Uber Health are also making contributions to the CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance. Experts from the Alliance are collaborating across key aspects such as plasma collection, clinical trial development, and product manufacturing.

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Media Contacts:

CSL Behring

Natalie deVane
Natalie.deVane@cslbehring.com
+1-610-999-8756

Greg Healy
Greg.Healy@CSLBehring.com
+1-610-906-4564