Raleigh, North Carolina – Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CPI) recently identified CPI-1058 as a broad spectrum antiviral against Sudan and Bundibugyo strains of Ebola virus.
The latest outbreak of Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda involves a closely related Bundibugyo virus. As of the 22nd September the World Health Organization (WHO) reported over 7800 confirmed cases and over 3780 confirmed deaths with a case fatality rate of 48%. The rapid growth of this outbreak coupled with the dismantling of USAID and the withdrawal of the USA from the WHO is further exacerbating a precarious situation. There is no currently approved vaccine or antiviral for treating Bundibugyo virus. Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has over a decade of experience developing small molecule antivirals for neglected diseases like Ebola and leverages non-dilutive funding from the National Institutes of Health.
“Unfortunately, it is left to a small company like mine to discover molecules for neglected diseases because the bigger pharmaceutical companies do not have a way to make money out of sporadic outbreaks of diseases like Ebola. Also, you are unlikely to see any of the trillion dollar valued AI companies doing this work. They do not have a clue about drug discovery nor the attention span to stick with something for more than a few seconds.” said Dr. Sean Ekins CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
“We have identified a small molecule using our own published machine learning models for inhibition of Ebola and recently tested this molecule in vitro against Sudan and Bundibugyo using external collaborations with academic and NIAID funded labs. These data indicate that CPI-1058 is a sub micromolar inhibitor of both Sudan and Bundibugyo viruses. In addition, CPI-1058 is an inhibitor of Zaire, Marburg and other viruses.”
“Our ultimate aim is to bring this treatment to patients to help stem the spread of the virus and then further develop it for stockpiling by the USA and other countries.” “We are certainly open to working with US government organizations like BARDA, DARPA etc. but these appear to have no role or influence during the current outbreak”. “We would therefore be interested in working with any non-US organizations that could assist us in applying CPI-1058 in the current outbreak and help prepare for the next one, because that is unfortunately inevitable” stated Dr. Ekins.
About Collaborations Pharmaceuticals:
Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has an active pipeline of molecules for infectious and rare diseases with considerable expertise in antiviral drug discovery. This work is aided by our inhouse software including Assay Central® software for data curation and machine learning as well as curated model collections such as MegaTox®, MegaTrans® and MegaPredict®. Most recently we have developed MegaSyn for generative drug design. For more information, http://www.collaborations.com/
For media inquiries, please contact:
Collaborations Pharmaceuticals:
Sean Ekins, PhD., D.Sc.
CEO and President
