Development of RNA Methyltransferase Inhibitors as Therapeutics for SARS-CoV2 and Future Pandemic Preparedness

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented damage to global health, society and economies. The development of successful vaccines has had a major impact but the dangers of the pandemic remain due the challenges of vaccinating the whole population and that protection given by vaccination reduces over time. In addition, there remains an ongoing risk that new virus variants emerge which the vaccine does not protect against. It is therefore important that society develops a suite of drugs against Covid-19 to treat infected individuals as part of the wider pandemic efforts.

This project aims to develop a drug against a Covid-19 protein to which no current drugs exist. Generation of such a drug will provide another approach to treating Covid-19 which can be used alongside existing approaches to treat infected patients or to treat patients which become resistant to current drugs. The drug that we plan to develop could also be effective against other viruses from the Covid family and could be used provide a treatment for patients during the time taken to develop a new vaccine against a new Covid family virus outbreak.

Storm is the leading company working on this type of Covid protein and hence is well placed to develop this drug and contribute to the global pandemic efforts and to protecting society from future outbreaks.