Nine teams have been selected as Concept Stage awardees of the $150M SMART Antiviral Prize, each advancing a distinct approach toward safe, broad-spectrum small molecule antivirals for the Togaviridae and Flaviviridae virus families. Read the official announcement here.
Each team will receive up to $2.5M to advance a well-defined technical and
development approach toward clinical stage antivirals.
Dr. Raymond F. Schinazi from Emory University, Dr. Ben Burwitz from Oregon Health Sciences University, and Dr. David Smith from Aligos Therapeutics have united under the PANACEA Project with the mission to develop pan-acting nucleoside analog countermeasures to eliminate arboviruses in the flaviviridae family.
Hackensack Meridian Health’s Center for Discovery and Innovation is partnering with Gilead Sciences and Rockefeller University to advance new broad-spectrum small molecule antivirals targeting conserved viral proteins to combat dengue and other flaviviruses.
The AI-driven Structure-enabled Antiviral Platform (ASAP) Discovery Consortium is bringing its highly successful industrialized fragment-to-candidate platform to bear to develop novel, safe, broad-spectrum RdRp inhibitors for dengue, Zika, and yellow fever viruses that are a scourge across the Americas and worldwide.
Neomorph, Inc. is leveraging its proprietary technology and platform to develop molecular glue degraders designed to eliminate essential viral proteins as a novel antiviral approach against members of the Flaviviridae family.
The READDI Forethought team from RTI, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke and NCCU is harnessing the innate response to infection to develop antiviral drugs effective against chikungunya virus and other togaviruses.
The Rockefeller University is leading a multi-institutional consortium to develop a new class of broadly acting oral antivirals targeting an essential viral mRNA cap methyltransferase conserved across flaviviruses, including dengue and Zika viruses.
SHIONOGI Inc. is developing broad-spectrum antiviral nucleoside analogs against dengue and other flaviviruses, while exploring cross-family activity to strengthen preparedness for future outbreaks.
ViRx@Stanford is using its AI-REALSMART-V technology platform to identify and optimize broad-spectrum oral small molecules targeting highly conserved amphipathic helix structures to advance to INDs for the treatment of the togaviruses and flaviviruses.
The Diamond laboratory (Washington University) is teaming up with U Penn and using Calibr-Skaggs AI and DNA encoded library technology to develop a broadly acting non-nucleoside RdRp inhibitor targeting the replication machinery of chikungunya virus and other alphaviruses.
Visit the SMART Antiviral Prize page to explore prize details, upcoming stages, and opportunities to team with innovators advancing broad-spectrum antivirals.
