First Health Pharmaceuticals is proud to be part of AVITHRAPID, the European Community funded public-private consortium for preparedness against potential pandemic viruses.
Viral diseases represent a major threat to global public health. AVITHRAPID aims to establish a pipeline of early stage drug candidates based on a set of small molecules whose bioactivity against various viral targets has been already shown and which can be rapidly translated into novel antiviral agents against emerging infectious diseases with pandemic potential. In addition, the consortium will conduct a Phase 2a clinical trial for a small molecule developed against Zika virus.
The AVITHRAPID research consortium comprises 18 research institutions and companies from 8 countries bringing together interdisciplinary expertise and approaches including molecular modeling, biochemical and cell-based assays, X-ray crystallography, medicinal chemistry, biophysical binding studies, ADME-Tox profiling, in vitro and in vivo PK, as well as animal disease models.
The AVITHRAPID consortium “Antiviral Therapeutics for Rapid Response Against Pandemic Infectious Diseases” is part of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme topic “Pandemic preparedness and re- sponse: Broad spectrum anti-viral therapeutics for infectious diseases with epidemic potential”, which has been launched with a budget of 50 million Euro to combat and prevent pandemics more efficiently. The AVITHRAPID project started in January 2024 with a duration of 54 months and a budget of 7.5 million EUR. The Swiss Partners in the AVITHRAPID consortium are funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI.