NIH awards initial $68M for AI-driven Structure-enabled Antiviral Platform (ASAP) for open science discovery of oral antivirals for pandemic preparedness

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We are excited to announce that the NIH has awarded an initial $68M of funding for the first three years of the AI-driven Structure-enabled Antiviral Platform (ASAP) as one of the NIAID-funded U19 Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers. Led by PIs John Chodera (MSKCC), Ben Perry (DNDi), and Alpha Lee (PostEra), ASAP builds on our earlier work with the COVID Moonshot, which delivered a SARS-CoV-2 oral antiviral preclinical candidate in 18 months, and will develop an open global oral antiviral pipeline with the goal of delivering medicines for globally equitable and affordable access in partnership with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi).

[ASAP concept] [DNDi press release] [ASAP website]

NIH BISTI talk: Open science antiviral discovery with 
the covid moonshot 🌙 🚀
and the open source drug discovery ecosystem

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I had the great pleasure of speaking to the NIH Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative (BISTI) community on 3 Feb 2022 about open science antiviral drug discovery with the COVID Moonshot and how the open source computer-aided drug discovery ecosystem functions as a fantastic mechanism to enable collaboration to address major challenges in drug discovery. Open source software communities such as the Open Molecular Software Foundation (OMSF), which sponsors the Open Force Field Initiative and the Open Free Energy Consortium, and OpenMM, play a major role in this. Community-wide blind challenges, such as D3R, SAMPL, and the new CACHE effort (a CASP for computational hit-finding), are also collaborative open science engines that drive progress.

A PDF version of the slides I presented can be found here: [PDF]

COVID Moonshot proposes new Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Center embracing open science and open-IP for global, equitable access

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The COVID Moonshot has shown our open science, structure-enabled AI-driven approach can go from fragment screen to preclinical phase in just 18 months spending less than $1M. We think our model is capable of changing antiviral discovery for pandemics for good.

Drug discovery for pandemics is broken. Patents don't make sense for future pandemics with uncertain timelines or for diseases that don't yet exist. The profit motive failed to deliver antivirals after SARS and MERS, and millions died of COVID.

We show there is an alternative: By building a robust, open pipeline of oral antivirals, we can prevent future pandemics, and bring a swift end to this one. There is a better way.

The first-generation oral antiviral from the COVID Moonshot is rapidly progressing toward the clinic under the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), with the World Health Organization Access to COVID Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) funding our work under an open IP model that will ensure true global, equitable access for a true global health threat.

All pandemics are global health threats. Our best defense is a healthy global antiviral discovery community with a robust pipeline of open discovery tools. We have a plan to make this happen ASAP: with the AI-driven Structure-enabled Antiviral Platform.

We're thrilled to have had the opportunity to submit our ASAP concept to the recent NIH call to fund multiple Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers, which aim to prevent the US from being caught without clinic-ready antivirals before the next pandemic.

The best use of public funds to build a pipeline of clinic-ready antivirals is to ensure everyone can get them, so that we won't need them here at home.

Drug discovery for pandemics must be focused on global, equitable access from the very start.

We’ve assembled an incredible team for ASAP: From the identification of resistance-robust targets to high-throughput structural biology at Diamond Light Source to AI-driven hit and lead optimization leveraging the talents and capabilities of MedChemica, PostEra, Folding@home, embracing open science throughout.

With the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) as a full partner in ASAP, we would aim to generate clinic-ready drugs under an open-IP model that could achieve true global, equitable access. 

Read more about our concept here: [PDF]

COVID Moonshot seeks NIH funding

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The COVID Moonshot—our patent-free, open science effort to discover an orally available inhibitor for SARS-CoV-2 main viral protease that could be used for treatment or prophylaxis following exposure—submitted a proposal to the NIH NIAID COVID-19 Emergency R01 program for funding to complete our task to deliver an inhibitor for IND-enabling studies! Award decisions should be made in Sep 2020, and funds beginning Oct 2020.

You can read the scientific component of the proposal (submitted 2020-08-14) here: [PDF]

UPDATE: NIH timelines have pushed back proposal review to Jan 2021.

UPDATE: We submitted a one-page supplement with additional preliminary data on 2020-12-14: [PDF]

UPDATE: Summary Statements have been made available on 2021-02-01: [PDF]