Grant: Project Grant

The global COVID-19 pandemic that has resulted in social, personal and economic upheaval will continue and secondary consequences, such overwhelmed health care systems, political unrest and food shortages, will add to the global hardship and death toll. Vaccines and therapeutics that stop or reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus and lessen disease are desperately needed to reduce morbidity, mortality and secondary consequences. Treatment for viruses, like other indications, take multiple years to decades to develop and, historically, the majority of approaches are unsuccessful. A vaccine offers the fastest way to obtain 'herd immunity'; however, variants of concern and variants of interest are posing new challenges worldwide. In addition, vaccines are not available worldwide hence the need to develop alternative treatments. For human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV), the discovery of successful small molecule therapeutics that target key viral proteins have led to the ability to manage or cure the disease. Successful therapies for COVID-19 must be aggressively pursued. We aim to develop a treatment for COVID-19 and the variants that target a protein encoded in the virus. Given the past success with HIV and HCV, this is a top candidate for the development of novel coronavirus antivirals.