Photo: Courtesy of GHDDI

A new consortium initiated by the European Commission's Innovative Medicines Initiative was launched on Tuesday to accelerate the discovery and development of urgently needed medicines to treat novel coronavirus. The Beijing-based medical research organization Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (GHDDI) numbers among the consortium's partners.

The consortium, Corona Accelerated R&D in Europe or CARE, is a five-year project bringing together 37 teams from academic and non-profit research institutions and pharmaceutical companies into a comprehensive drug discovery engine to accelerate treatment options for COVID-19.

With only limited therapy and prevention options available against COVID-19, the pandemic has continued, with more cases and deaths every day. 

GHDDI will work together with the University of Dundee and other partners in the hit-to-lead effort (Work Package 3, WP3) and contribute its expertise in medicinal chemistry once any hits are generated from WP1 or WP2, it said. 

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in January, GHDDI has initiated a series of efforts in drug repurposing, AI-based data mining, model generation and virtual screening as well as discovery projects researching anti-viral small molecules, neutralizing antibodies and vaccines. 

Ding Sheng, director of GHDDI said, "In this trying moment for all mankind, GHDDI is proud to join this global collaborative effort to gather and integrate resources from dedicated partners to accelerate drug discovery towards COVID-19 and future coronavirus threats."

GHDDI was jointly founded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Tsinghua University and Beijing Municipal Government in 2016. 

"It is important to work together and invest beforehand so that we can be more prepared when similar diseases hit again," Ding noted.