Corona Accelerated R&D in Europe (CARE), a new a new public-private partnership consortium, has been launched to support the therapy development for Covid-19 and future coronavirus threats.
Supported by Europe’s Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), CARE is a large-scale undertaking, dedicated for discovery and development of emergency medication to treat Covid-19.
The initiative is funded by cash contributions totalling € 77.7m, from the European Union (EU) along with cash and in-kind contributions from eleven European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) companies and three IMI-Associated Partners.
CARE is a five-year project that brings together 37 partners from Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US.
The consortium is led by French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (VRI-Inserm), Janssen Pharmaceutica of Johnson & Johnson and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
VRI-Inserm executive director and CARE coordinator Yves Lévy said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as the largest global health threat to humanity in this century, requiring the global scientific community to join forces in unprecedented ways.
“Beyond the scientific excellence of the different teams involved in this very ambitious project, CARE is bringing together 37-partners in an alliance pooling their expertise and know-how around an ambitious 5-year work plan to develop therapeutics against the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Exscientia to lead small molecule drug design activities under CARE initiative
CARE is aimed at developing effective therapies with a positive safety profile, , along with new drugs and antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Exscientia, a drug discovery firm, would lead the small molecule drug design activities under the initiative, using the Artificial Intelligence (AI) to speed-up the pre-clinical phase of drug discovery.
The company is expected to leverage its full-stack AI-platform to create and optimise the design of new medicines and utilise the CARE chemical starting points from phenotypic, target-based and in silico screens to deliver candidates into clinical trials.
Also, Exscientia would provide its original chemical starting points, discovered from its ongoing Covid-19 screening and research, to CARE.
Exscientia CEO Andrew Hopkins said: “The CARE consortium has ambitious goals to deliver pan-coronoviral therapeutics that can be useful in the current and future viral pandemics. We are taking a comprehensive approach to developing agents against multiple coronavirus drug targets.
“Exscientia is proud to be at the heart of this joint research effort, as the primary drug design center. We intend to bring the demonstrated speed and power of our cutting-edge AI-platform to CARE to accelerate the delivery of anti-coronavirus drug candidates to the clinic to meet the urgent needs of patients.”
