Sixteen drugmakers have signed on for a major initiative by the National Institutes of Health to speed the development of COVID-19 therapies and vaccines.

The NIH unveiled the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) partnership on Friday and said the unprecedented public-private effort will help prioritize vaccine and drug candidates, streamline clinical trials and coordinate regulatory access.

“Battling the COVID-19 pandemic is far too great a challenge for any one company or institution to solve alone,” said Mikael Dolsten, chief scientific officer at Pfizer — one of the drugmakers participating in the initiative. “This potentially powerful NIH initiative may allow us to further accelerate the delivery of much-needed therapies to patients around the world.”

All the partners have committed to standardizing preclinical evaluations in an open forum to allow for comparison and validation. ACTIV will also connect existing networks to maximize the capacity and effectiveness of clinical trials.

In addition to Pfizer, the participants include AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Evotec, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, KSQ Therapeutics, Eli Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Takeda and Vir Biotechnology.

The FDA and the European Medicines Agency will also be participating along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.