Completed Infection & Immunity Lungs & Breathing

Design and implementation of a translational drug development platform for COVID-19 to generate preclinical evidence in support of treatment arms of the ANTICOV clinical trial

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative
Funding £1.5M
Period Sept 2020 — Dec 2021

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A team led by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative is building a rapid testing pipeline to decide which repurposed antiviral drugs should enter the next arm of a major COVID-19 clinical trial called ANTICOV. The problem is straightforward: during a pandemic, there is no time to develop new drugs from scratch. Researchers must instead test existing medicines—originally designed for other diseases—to see if they work against SARS-CoV-2. But choosing which drugs to test requires reliable preclinical evidence, and the standard models for predicting how a drug behaves in the human body were not validated for this new virus. This project fills that gap by creating a translational platform that combines laboratory experiments with computer modelling—specifically, physiologically-based and population pharmacokinetic simulations—to predict drug concentrations and effects in patients. If successful, this platform will directly inform the treatment arms of the ANTICOV trial, accelerating the identification of effective drug combinations for mild COVID-19. Beyond the current pandemic, the project aims to cement a collaborative infrastructure for future outbreak preparedness, allowing researchers to rapidly evaluate candidate medicines against emerging viral threats. The total budget is £1.97 million, running from September 2020 to December 2021.

View original technical description
Through the rapid establishment of a translational pathway, DNDi and its partners aim at providing the next generation of candidate medicines for SARS-CoV-2 clinical trials as well as integrating back-translations to validate the most appropriate preclinical models. The project is planned to run from September 2020-December 2021, with a total budget of 1.97M GBP, split into three pillars of activities composed of short and medium- term deliverables: - Pillar 1 : Selection of the best combination of repurposed antiviral drugs to include into the 3rd arm of the ANTICOV clinical trial and the next back-ups - Pillar 2 : Support candidate progression through an integrated pharmacometrics package involving both Physiologically-Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) and population pharmacokinetic (PopPK) modelling approaches - Pillar 3 : Development of a translational platform and performance of a comparative analysis of selected drugs/combinations (including those from Pillar 1) to better understand and refine the screening cascade with best translational value; definition of a Target Candidate Profile (TCP) for SARS-CoV-2 mild infection This project will cement a collaborative partnership in the SARS-CoV-2 translational space that will pave the way to future longer-term discovery projects and preparedness for additional future threats. Key words: COVID-19 / Drug re-purposing / Translational drug development pathway

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Laurent Fraisse (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

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Repurposing approved drugs as potent antiviral combinations to treat COVID-19 disease
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AGILE: Seamless Phase I/IIa Platform for the Rapid Evaluation of Candidates for COVID-19 treatment

Original classification

Therapeutics Accelerator

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.