'Vac­cines alone are in­suf­fi­cien­t': Mer­ck, Ali­gos work with aca­d­e­m­ic ex­perts to find Covid an­tivi­rals as part of $65M NIH grant

Mer­ck is throw­ing its weight be­hind a new con­sor­tium of aca­d­e­m­ic, non­prof­it and biotech sci­en­tists to dis­cov­er oral an­tivi­rals that can fight Covid-19 — and pan­dem­ic virus­es of the fu­ture.

The NIH and the NI­AID will pro­vide $65 mil­lion over three years to fund the The Met­ro­pol­i­tan An­tiVi­ral Drug Ac­cel­er­a­tor, or MAV­DA, as it works to find and test small mol­e­cule drugs to tar­get coro­n­avirus­es. With an em­pha­sis on SARS-CoV-2 and one or more se­lect RNA virus­es with pan­dem­ic po­ten­tial, the goal is to make oral treat­ments that can be giv­en in an out­pa­tient set­ting.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER