The collaboration has the potential to revolutionise the way flavivirus infections are treated
Foundation for Neglected Disease Research (FNDR) and DevsHealth have announced the start of a collaborative project to develop new broad-spectrum antiviral agents for infections caused by flaviviruses such as dengue, Zika, West Nile virus, and Japanese encephalitis, among others.
The collaboration has the potential to revolutionise the way flavivirus infections are treated. There are currently no drugs available to patients to treat these infections. The new treatments will not only be effective against multiple flaviviruses but will also, thanks to this international collaboration be affordable and accessible to patients who need them.
The new project will allow DevsHealth, a DeepTech company working on anti-infectious drug development using AI, real-world data and molecular modelling, to join forces with FNDR, a not-for-profit organisation with expertise in drug discovery for infectious and neglected diseases, and work directly in one of the territories where flavivirus infections have a high socio-economic impact. The mix of FNDR’s capabilities in infectious diseases research together with the DeepTech platform from DevsHealth will allow the consortium to accelerate the discovery of new broad-spectrum agents for flaviviruses. DevsHealth will be in charge of in silico studies and chemistry efforts and the FNDR will manage all in vitro and in vivo experiments.
According to Alfons Nonell-Canals, CEO, DevsHealth, “This partnership will allow us to work on a high social impact project by using our technology to improve people’s health as well as to facilitate access to medicines, especially in LMICs”.
This objective is aligned with the FNDR’s mission, which is explained by Dr Shridhar Narayanan, CEO of the FNDR, “This collaboration with DevsHealth allows us to combine the power of AI/ML technologies with FNDR’s in vitro and in vivo capabilities to accelerate the discovery and development of a broad spectrum antiviral drug for mosquito-borne neglected diseases.”
