Preparedness: Symposium underscores READDI’s role in ‘marathon of preparedness’
Participants and experts at the ‘Ready on Day 1’ Symposium.
READDI Symposium highlights pandemic readiness, featuring broad-spectrum antiviral strategies and expert discussions on preparedness.
Imagine a scenario where COVID-19 had hit, but the world was ready with a medication that could stop it in its tracks.
Making that scenario a reality was the focus of “Ready on Day 1,” a half-day symposium hosted by READDI, Inc. — the Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiative — in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Sept. 20.
A nonprofit organization, READDI leverages the latest virology know-how and medicinal chemistry to develop broad-acting small molecule antiviral therapeutics — pills that can be taken with a drink of water — to prevent severe illness, hospitalization and death. Critically, the company is doing so now, before the next novel virus emerges.
“It’s not about the sprint of response from the moment that we’re all panicking. It is about the marathon of preparedness before that day zero,” said speaker Charlotte Baker, deputy head of the London-based International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat (IPPS) which is affiliated with the G7 and is collaborating with READDI to help prepare for the next pandemic.
Baker, who arrived fresh from the United Nations General Assembly Science Summit, joined a blockbuster roster of experts who discussed the urgency of preparedness and the importance of broad-spectrum therapeutics — READDI’s signature approach. Other speakers included former United States Senator Richard Burr and Matt Hepburn, MD, with the Department of Defense (DOD), who was COVID Vaccine Lead for Operation Warp Speed.
“Ready on Day 1” drew a capacity crowd of nearly 100 attendees. It followed the annual scientific meeting of the Carolina-based READDI AViDD Center, one of nine Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern around the U.S. funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Targeting virus families
Following introductory remarks from UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, READDI CEO Jimmy Rosen held up a deck of playing cards, a prop meant to drive home READDI’s innovative “broad-spectrum” antiviral approach. Drawing a card from the deck, Rosen asked audience members on one side of the room to silently guess the card’s number. Those on the other side needed only guess the suit.
“The suit is a heart,” Rosen said. “How many people on this side guessed it was a heart?”
Hands shot up.
Turning to face the other side of the room, he said, “OK, the card is a 30112X.”
No hands.
Like the next pandemic virus, card number 30112X does not yet exist, but the suit that it belongs to does.
“If this deck of cards represents viruses and each suit is a family of viruses, READDI is making drugs that work against the suits,” Rosen explained. “We have to be ready with drugs for every suit in the deck […] because we don’t know what the next virus is going to be.”
That’s how viral pandemics work; the specific source of the next outbreak is a mystery. Experts call it Disease X.
“We have to accept that and use it as our design principle,” said Carolina virologist Nat Moorman, PhD, READDI co-founder and scientific adviser.
READDI’s design principle, Moorman said, takes advantage of the fact that viruses in a family share inherited traits that allow scientists to target vulnerabilities within families. READDI is developing antiviral drugs that work against an entire family of viruses — even viruses that have not yet emerged.
The drug discovery work for five top virus families of pandemic concern is well underway, Moorman shared in his presentation. He detailed progress on two promising compounds — NZ-804 and CMX-521 — that target members of the coronavirus family, including SARS-CoV-2 and potentially future coronaviruses that have not yet emerged.
‘It’s not a miracle. It’s science.’
The catastrophic consequences of getting caught off guard by a novel virus like SARS-CoV-2 was a recurring theme throughout the afternoon.
“We did not have therapeutics. We didn’t have vaccines. People were hiding in their houses,” said Dean Nancy Messonnier, MD, of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) when the novel coronavirus emerged. She led the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine implementation program.
Read full article at go.unc.edu/day1-symposium
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