Home-grown treatment for COVID-19 receives funding boost
L-R: Associate Professor Peter Czabotar (WEHI), Professor Guillaume Lessene (WEHI), Professor David Komander (WEHI, Professor Susan Charman (MIPS), Dr Brad Sleebs (WEHI), Associate Professor Melissa Call (WEHI). Credit: WEHI
The federal government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) has invested almost $1 million into progressing Australian research on a combination antiviral therapy to treat COVID-19.
The funding will support a drug discovery program led by WEHI in collaboration with the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS). The multi-disciplinary team will target two key proteins in a combination treatment, to stop the virus replicating and prevent the selection of resistant strains.
The dual approach is designed to fight the emergence of antiviral resistance, a key threat with existing COVID-19 treatments that target a single protein.
One of the targeted proteins is linked to the body’s immune response, offering hope of potential benefit for the treatment of long COVID.
The importance of effective antiviral treatments has been underscored as new COVID-19 variants emerge, driving up infection rates and continuing to cause significant health and economic impacts.
Professor Susan Charman from MIPS, who is a project Chief Investigator and Director of Monash’s Centre for Drug Candidate Optimisation, will lead the evaluation of the biopharmaceutical properties of the antiviral compounds.
The MIPS research team will conduct in vitro and in vivo profiling of new candidate compounds to define their physicochemical, metabolism and pharmacokinetic properties. Identifying compounds with acceptable properties is critical to ensure efficacy, safety and a convenient dosing regimen.
Professor Charman said that effective antiviral treatments will continue to play a critical role in controlling the severity of the virus, particularly amongst high-risk groups.
“Antiviral treatments are central to the ongoing management of COVID-19 and although we’ve seen extraordinary achievements with vaccines and drugs to fight the virus, the urgent need for a combination therapy remains,” Professor Charman said.
“This funding will enable us to work with WEHI to drive the research to the next stage of development. Ultimately the goal is to develop a novel antiviral to address the issue of virus replication and antiviral resistance, and we know from past experience that combination antiviral therapy is the way to go.”
Project leader Professor Guillaume Lessene said: “The development of effective new medications takes time and significant investment, but we hope our promising results to date could enable us to rapidly progress this new combination therapy to the clinic.”
The research brings together WEHI and MIPS expertise to push the research to the next stage of development, enabling pre-clinical testing to optimise the compounds for efficacy, safety and stability.
Chief Investigators on the new project: Professor Guillaume Lessene, Professor David Komander, Professor Peter Czabotar, Professor Marc Pellegrini, Dr Brad Sleebs and Associate Professor Melissa Call (WEHI), Professor Susan Charman (MIPS).
To learn more visit: https://www.wehi.edu.au/news/funding-boost-home-grown-treatment-covid-19
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About the Centre for Drug Candidate Optimisation (CDCO)
The CDCO is a collaborative research centre that provides expertise and infrastructure in biopharmaceutical lead optimisation to multidisciplinary drug discovery teams for improved compound design, selection and progression. The team is comprised of experienced staff with expertise in physicochemical profiling, drug metabolism, in vitro biopharmaceutics, in vivo pharmacokinetics and bioanalysis using LC-MS/MS. The Centre utilises fully validated scientific platforms to provide decision quality data to academic, commercial and not-for-profit drug discovery programs.
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