Coronavirus Portfolio

The Coronavirus portfolio was started in June 2020 to identify novel therapies for the treatment of COVID-19 and other potential pandemic coronaviruses. The on-going Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak has resulted in excess of 400 million infections and 5 million deaths. Despite the success of the vaccination programmes, the emergence of new variants and care for those unable to be vaccinated highlights the significant need for novel small molecule therapeutics to treat the disease.

Early in the pandemic, the DDU, working with Principal Investigators in the School of Life Sciences, developed and ran two high throughput screens against key antiviral targets. In collaboration with Professor Victoria Cowling and leveraging existing discovery expertise in methyltransferases we rapidly developed a novel viral methyltransferase assay and screened a repurposing library against this exciting discovery target – the importance and impact of this work was highlighted when it was featured on the cover of SLAS discovery.

Further screening and subsequent development of a hit series has now yielded the first known co-crystal structure of this target with a bound inhibitor – this has the potential to accelerate drug discovery against this target. The DDU is an associate member of the IMI CARE consortium which aims to deliver treatments for the current and future coronavirus outbreaks. We are committing all hit chemical matter to the consortium and now have active hit to lead programs against both targets.

We are an Associated Partner In CARE, an Important title as it positions us alongside the Pharma partners.

Hits →

NSP14

NSP3 Hit to lead → Lead optimisation → Pre-Clinical → Clinical →

Collaborators and funders: