Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AVITHRAPID (Antiviral Therapeutics for Rapid Response Against Pandemic Infectious Diseases)
Période du rapport: 2024-01-01 au 2025-06-30
support the search for novel broad-spectrum antiviral compounds by advancing multiple approaches.
Building on a pre-existing set of bioactive small molecules, which are at least at the validated hit level, AVITHRAPID strives for the
development of pre-clinical candidates targeting several viruses. This will be achieved by combining the relevant expertise
for pre-clinical drug discovery, including molecular modeling, biochemical and cell-based assays, X-ray crystallography, medicinal
chemistry, biophysical binding studies, ADMETox profiling, in vitro and in vivo PK, as well as animal disease models. In addition, the
consortium aims to conduct a Phase 2a clinical trial for a small molecule developed against Zika virus.
Moreover, the consortium aims to identify and validate further viral targets and thereby contribute to the search for novel antiviral
targets. As a consequence of the activities in AVITHRAPID, an early-stage drug discovery pipeline will be established that can be used
to rapidly identify and develop novel antiviral compounds against emerging diseases.
We have further validated and optimised several small molecules addressing viral targets that were in addition evaluated using different antiviral assays.
Several peptide-porphyrine conjugates demonstrated good efficacy in two animal models (mouse and neonatal mouse model)
Our work on formulatons led to the identification of an optimal liposomal formulation (Formulation C), capable of efficiently encapsulating antiviral compounds.
We have identified serotype-specific vulnerabilities and outbreak-linked mutations of Dengue virus through phylogenetics.
AVITHRAPID released two machine-learning based models for predicting small molecule solubility and hERG toxicity based on proprietary data from a pharmaceutical partner.
Various virtual screening campaigns resulted in several novel inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 and Dengue virus as shown by preliminary experimental validation. These compounds may serve as starting point for the development of novel therapeutics.
Several virtual screening campaigns resulted in higher hit rates compared to literature data, suggesting superior quality of the chosen methodology.
The prediction accuracy of the solubility model is 82.3 % and superior to many commercially available tools.