NCATS awards funds to help repurpose antimalarials to fight against Ebola virus

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) recently awarded $596,533 to Collaborations Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CPI) to develop a partnership with the Texas Biomedical Research Institute to repurpose an antimalarial for use against the Ebola virus disease.

Since the beginning of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, the virus has resulted in approximately 28,000 suspected cases and more than 11,000 deaths.

SRI International and the Texas Biomedical Research Institute identified three compounds that were active against the virus in vitro using a large-scale, high throughput screen and machine learning models.

“We used Bayesian machine learning models based on the earlier published dataset to screen a library of more than 2,000 drugs and drug-like molecules, which then lead to the discovery that of the three compounds identified, a relatively new antimalarial called pyronaridine, approved in Europe, had promising activity in vitro and could be worthy of testing in vivo (in a living organism) against the Ebola virus,” said CPI CEO Dr. Sean Ekins.

Dr. Robert Davey, interim chair of the Texas Biomedical Department of Virology and Immunology, said pyronaridine was promising because it was already an approved drug in Europe and has been used in thousands of patients. It may have favorable molecular properties that could speed up the drug’s transition into clinical testing.