New Antivirals for Infections with Pandemic Potential

For infectious disease management and control, vaccines are considered golden countermeasures. but are not the most adequate tool for mitigating the early effects of an outbreak. Taking the recent COVID-19 pandemic as an example, accessto broadly applicable therapeutic antivirals would have had a major impact, decreasing the human toll of the disease, and alleviating the burden carried by health care systems. It is urgent to focus resources and efforts on the development of broad spectrum antiviral drugs against unknown pathogens. The NAVIPP consortium aims to strengthen the EU’s readiness and response capacity to viral threats by assembling an international R&D platform for antiviral drug development against pandemic prone pathogens. The consortium will implement a strategic, multi gear R&D and clinical roadmap for the identification, optimisation, preclinical and clinical investigation of broad spectrum antivirals against pathogens with epidemic or pandemic potential. In particular, the consortium will design compounds library with increased diversity to be tested in high-throughput assays against highly pathogenic viruses. Hits coming from this exercise, as well as assets that have demonstrated antiviral activity in previous exercises, will be assessed against a larger virus panel. Validation of the antiviral efficacy of the hits will be done in state-of-the art ex vivo models to prioritize compounds going to in vivo proof of concept studies. Mode of action and target will be also interrogated. Additionally, the implementation of an adaptive platform trial will enable early clinical investigation of 3 antivirals and will pave the way for clinical testing of other antivirals. Finally, the project will investigate new innovative and improved delivery systems of antivirals through nano conjugation. Ultimately, this project will deliver a pipeline of broad-spectrum antiviral candidates and in the longer term contribute to European preparedness for emerging threats.