Global public funding for coronavirus vaccine R&D fell to $35 million across 21 grants in 2025, down from a six-year total of $6.7 billion spread over 1,439 grants — with more than half of all money awarded in 2020 alone. That is the headline finding of an analysis published May 26, 2026 in npj Vaccines by Derek Fleming and colleagues at the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), together with researchers at Oxford's Pandemic Sciences Institute.

The study draws on the Pandemic PACT Grant and Evidence Gap Tracker database, filtering more than 24,000 Coronaviridae-specific grants from January 2020 through December 2025 down to 1,491 categorized as vaccine research, development and implementation. A custom Excel VBA macro triaged titles and abstracts by search-term confidence tiers, and CIDRAP researchers manually verified each rating. The work was funded by CEPI, which played no role in design, analysis or writing, according to the declarations.

How did the funding curve move?

The money arrived in two waves, then vanished.

• 2020: 51% of all six-year funding (480 grants) originated this year; 99.5% of those grants targeted ancestral SARS-CoV-2 or specific variants rather than broad protection.
• 2022: 40% of that year's coronavirus funding went to broadly protective coronavirus vaccine (BPCV) work — 42% of all BPCV money awarded across the entire study period.
• 2023–2025: Research investments dropped to 7.4% of the six-year total in 2023, roughly 1.7% in 2024, and near pre-pandemic levels in 2025.

BPCV-specific funding peaked at about $199 million (37 grants) in 2022, then slid to $99 million (30 grants) in 2023, $35 million (14 grants) in 2024, and $25.6 million across just two grants in 2025.

What drove the U.S. retreat?

The United States accounted for nearly $2.5 billion (746 grants) of coronavirus vaccine R&D from 2020 to 2023 — roughly 37% of global funding — including about $127 million (94 grants) for BPCV work.

In 2024 the U.S. contribution fell to roughly $51 million (58 grants), of which $36 million went to BPCV projects across nine grants. In 2025 it collapsed to about $6 million over 11 grants, with zero dollars directed at broadly protective vaccine development. The authors attribute the contraction to shifting political priorities, growing anti-vaccine sentiment, and U.S. policy changes cutting government research funding.

One caveat matters for portfolio planning: the analysis captures only awarded grants, so 2025 U.S. cancellations of previously awarded funding do not appear in the data. The database also excludes private-sector industry investment entirely, meaning the commercial pipeline sits outside these figures.

Why does breadth matter for the next threat?

The authors argue the funding gap weakens preparedness on mechanistic grounds. First-generation vaccines concentrated neutralizing antibody responses on immunodominant, highly mutable Spike epitopes. Omicron escaped most existing neutralizing antibodies, and XBB-lineage variants later combined convergent receptor-binding domain mutations with maintained ACE2 binding fitness.

The spillover pipeline is not hypothetical. The paper cites ACE2 binding as an ancestral, evolvable sarbecovirus trait; SARS-CoV-2-related bat viruses capable of human-cell replication; and recently identified merbecoviruses in pangolins and bats that use human receptors, including HKU5-CoV lineage 2's use of human ACE2. Coronaviridae has produced three highly pathogenic human viruses in 25 years: SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2.

The BPCV use-case has also evolved, the authors note. A 2025 modelling study found a stockpiled pan-sarbecovirus vaccine could have prevented millions of COVID-19 deaths, but manufacturers' demonstrated capacity to rapidly design updated mRNA vaccines complicates the stockpile argument. The trade-off hinges on whether globally equitable manufacturing capacity exists at scale.

Is this pattern unique to coronaviruses?

No. Parallel Pandemic PACT analyses show the same boom-and-bust shape elsewhere:

• Influenza vaccine R&D contracted over the same 2020–2025 window.
• Mpox vaccine funding peaked at roughly $169 million in 2023 after the 2022 outbreak, then fell to about $79 million in 2024 and $32 million in 2025.

The mpox case fits a familiar cycle: surge during crisis, contract after. The authors flag the respiratory-virus case as more perilous given continuous zoonotic spillover risk.

What are the method limits?

The dataset depends on the completeness of publicly available sources — governmental, foundation and philanthropic grant mechanisms only. Missing entries could obscure some research objectives, though the authors judge omissions unlikely to change the overall pattern given the sample size. Each grant was indexed by start year, with the total award attributed to that year. The underlying VBA macro code is available on request, and the Pandemic PACT software is open source under an MIT license.

The paper closes with a direct appeal: sustained, globally diversified investment during inter-pandemic periods, building on the tools, expertise and institutional frameworks already in place, is what the authors say the next coronavirus threat will require.