Project data

Funding Entity: European Commission

Call: HORIZON-HLTH-2023-DISEASE-03-04

Coordinator: Fraunhofer-Institut für Translationale Medizin und Pharmakologie ITMP (Germany)

UNISI Principal Investigator: Prof. Maurizio Zazzi

Department: Department of Medical Biotechnology (DBM)

Start date: 1 January 2024

End date: 30 June 2028

 

Description

Accelerating pandemic preparedness: antivirals for known and newly identified threats

Antiviral medications help the body fight viral infections. They minimise the symptoms, shorten their duration and potentially reduce the risk of spreading the virus. Increasing pandemic preparedness will include developing broad spectrum antiviral therapeutics for infectious diseases with epidemic – and subsequently pandemic – potential. The EU-funded AVITHRAPID project plans to establish an early-stage drug discovery pipeline targeting several viruses and building on a pre-existing set of promising bioactive small molecules. The project will leverage cutting-edge preclinical drug discovery techniques and test an existing candidate small molecule in clinical trials. Furthermore, the team plans to identify additional viral targets to accelerate research on their corresponding antiviral targets.

Objective

The European Consortium “Antiviral Therapeutics for Rapid Response Against Pandemic Infectious Diseases”” (AVITHRAPID) aims to 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 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.

 

Source: CORDIS

 

Project website: https://avithrapid.eu/

 

Disclaimer: This project has been funded under Grant agreement ID: 101137192, European Commission.