NIH Awards $68M to AI Company as Part of Antiviral Drug Development Collab

May 23, 2022 - The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have announced that PostEra, a biotechnology company specializing in machine learning for preclinical drug discovery, has been awarded $68 million as part of the agency’s efforts to develop antiviral drugs to prevent the next pandemic.

This award is part of an initiative by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) focused on establishing nine Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern.

According to the NIH press release, the AViDD centers will conduct research to develop candidate COVID-19 antivirals, particularly those that can be taken in outpatient settings and antivirals that target specific viral families with significant potential to cause a pandemic. Some of these viruses include picornaviruses (including enteroviruses and other cold-causing viruses), flaviviruses (including the viruses that cause yellow fever, dengue, and Zika), filoviruses (including Ebola viruses and the Marburg virus), paramyxoviruses, togaviruses, and bunyaviruses.

Specifically, AViDD centers are tasked with researching early-stage identification and validation of viral targets, with a focus on identifying small molecules and biotherapeutics that directly block these targets. As drug candidates are identified and tested for factors such as breadth and potency, the most promising will enter late-stage preclinical development.

The participating centers are encouraged to draw on their resources and expertise to help their research progress. As part of the initiative, PostEra has partnered with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, a global charity with expertise in drug development for global equitable access, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to lead the AI-Driven Structure-Enabled Antiviral Platform (ASAP) consortium.

ASAP will use PostEra’s end-to-end AI-first approach to accelerate drug discovery. The approach will focus on generating molecules with optimized properties, designing rapid synthesis, and optimally prioritizing experiments.

"We are honored to be co-leading this consortium," said Alpha Lee, PhD, chief scientific officer of PostEra and co-founder of COVID Moonshot, in the press release. "We believe that our AI platform will accelerate the discovery of therapeutics that will prevent pandemics."

The AViDD award funding is part of the Antiviral Program for Pandemics (APP), a research program designed to speed the development of therapeutics for COVID-19.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for new antiviral drugs, especially those that could easily be taken by patients at home while their symptoms are still mild,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, MD, in the press release. “Decades of prior research on the structure and vulnerabilities of coronaviruses greatly accelerated our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we hope that similar research focused on antivirals will better prepare us for the next pandemic.”

In total, $577 million was awarded to 15 recipients who will work together to establish the following AViDD centers:

• Scripps Research Institute: The Center for Antiviral Medicines & Pandemic Preparedness
• The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston: The UTMB-Novartis Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: The Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiative – AViDD Center
• Stanford University School of Medicine: The Development of Outpatient Antiviral Cocktails against SARS-CoV-2 and other Potential Pandemic RNA Viruses
• Emory University and Georgia State University: The Antiviral Countermeasures Development Center
• Hackensack University Medical Center: The Metropolitan AntiViral Drug Accelerator
• University of California, San Francisco: The QBI Coronavirus Research Group Pandemic Response Program
• University of Minnesota: Midwest AViDD Center
• Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, PostEra, and Sloan Kettering Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center: AI-Driven Structure-Enabled Antiviral Platform