CARE consortium dispatches to quicken drug discovery and improvement for COVID-19

Overview

• Post By : Kumar Jeetendra


• Source: Boehringer Ingelheim


• Date: 19 Aug,2020

Using a grant approximately $77.7 million, CARE is funded by cash donations by the European Union (EU) and money and in-kind contributions from Australian European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) businesses and three IMI-Associated Partners. CARE is a five-year project bringing together 37 partners from Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the US, and is led by VRI-Inserm (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Paris, France), Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, one of those Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Beerse, Belgium), and Takeda Pharmaceuticals International AG, (Zurich, Switzerland). It integrates partners’ COVID-19 jobs continuing since February 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as the largest global health threat to humanity in this century, requiring the global scientific community to join forces in unprecedented ways. Beyond the scientific excellence of the different teams involved in this very ambitious project, CARE is bringing together 37 partners in an alliance pooling their expertise and know-how around an ambitious five-year work plan to develop therapeutics against the current COVID-19 pandemic. We are very grateful for the financial support provided by the Innovative Medicine Initiative that will enable us to implement this plan.”-Professor Yves Lévy, Executive Director of the VRI-Inserm and CARE coordinator

Without a licensed vaccines and just limited treatment options contrary to COVID-19, the pandemic is ongoing, highlighting more deaths and cases every day. Uniting several of the most innovative and seasoned scientists from all applicable areas in a unique collaborative spirit CARE will optimize synergies and complementarities with other endeavors such as the Gates Foundation-supported COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, MANCO1, SCORE2, and the ECRAID3 system, to accelerate the road to supplying options for the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as potential coronavirus outbreaks. After studying in the lab, the project will advance the most promising drug candidates into clinical trials in people.

It is humbling to see such a large collection of the best scientific minds in Europe come together to solve this complex problem with such urgency. COVID-19 is a once in a lifetime scientific challenge for our generation. CARE aims to create effective therapies with a positive safety profile for current and future coronaviral outbreaks. We hope to move fast and have a meaningful impact in a timely manner.”-Kumar Saikatendu, Ph.D., Director, Global Research Externalization, Takeda

“We’re very excited to start the CARE consortium and collaborate with other leading specialists to desperately identify new medicines against SARS-CoV-2 along with other coronaviruses that will possess the capacity to cause epidemics,” additional CARE project leader Marnix Van Loock, Senior Scientific Director and R&D Lead of Emerging Pathogens, Global Public Health, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV. “As part of the initiative, we anticipate applying learnings from a continuous collaboration on COVID-19 with all the Rega Institute for Medical Research, a part of KU Leuven, to display a medication repurposing library of thousands of existing drug substances.”

Comprehensive quick – and long-term reaction to COVID-19
CARE aims to produce effective therapies with a favorable security profile for your COVID-19 pandemic (drug repositioning), and create new drugs and antibodies specially designed to tackle the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The consortium builds on three pillars:

1.Drug repositioning, by viewing and profiling compound libraries led by partners with the goal of quickly progressing molecules to complex stages of clinical testing.
2.Small-molecule drug discovery based on at silico screening and profiling of candidate substances directed against SARS-CoV-2 and future coronavirus targets.
3.Virus neutralizing antibody discovery using fully human phage and yeast display, immunisation of all humanised animal models, patient B cells and in silico layout.

Closely integrated with these pillars are work streams focusing on the refinement of candidate substances via a comprehensive medicinal chemistry campaign, systems research study and pre-clinical and clinical analysis of atoms from all 3 pillars. The systems biology work package will investigate the viral pathophysiology to improve our understanding of the interplay between virus disease stages and individual immune reactions. It will identify infection markers, to notify therapy growth and improve clinical trial monitoring and design of Phase 1 and 2 trials investigating new therapeutics created by CARE.