Preparing for the next pandemic: scientists discuss drugs, discoveries and directions at a symposium in La Jolla

Preparing for the next pandemic comes down to a combination of science and strategy, scientists said at the first Pandemic Preparedness Symposium on March 8 at the Scripps Seaside Forum in La Jolla.

An all-day forum called “Antivirals for the Next Big Threat” was sponsored by La Jolla-based Scripps Research. It brought together leading medical and scientific authorities to discuss a proactive framework for creating readily available antiviral drugs that are most likely to destroy viruses. provoke the next global pandemic.

The event included keynote speakers, panel discussions, and networking opportunities for scientists and others.

“There is a high possibility that the next pandemic will be a virus or a virus from a family of viruses that we know about,” said Sumit Chanda, Scripps Research Professor of Immunology and Microbiology, who leads the Center for Antivirals and Pandemic Preparedness. .

CAMPP was founded in Scripps last year after receiving a $67 million award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.

The three-year, two-year renewable grant is part of the U.S. government’s response to COVID-19. CAMPP is one of nine antiviral drug development centers for pandemic pathogens set up nationwide and funded with a total of US$577 million to develop antiviral drugs for COVID and other virus families with a high potential to cause a future pandemic.

Chanda said preparations include global scientific collaboration, development and stockpiling of antivirals and vaccines, improved scientific communication with the public, and coordinated pandemic preparedness programs.

Global collaboration

Effective mitigation of a future pandemic requires global surveillance and coordinated response strategies that include “scientific collaboration that transcends policy” to share information, Chand said.

Dr. Trevor Mandel, President of Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said “surveillance is a prerequisite … for any rational response to the pandemic.”

According to him, there is currently no coordination because “we live in a fragmented world.”

Antiviral drugs and vaccines

“It takes time to make an antiviral drug to order, [but] Having something at the ready that isn’t perfect but can mitigate death and illness will be key to quickly easing a future pandemic, Chand said. It also requires the development of new vaccines, he added.

Karl Dieffenbach, director of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he was frustrated by the tendency of those involved in funding COVID-19 treatment to “desire immediate success.” … They don’t want to hear that some things just take time.”

“The biggest thing we can do right now,” Mandel said, “is not just create effective antiviral drugs, but antiviral drugs that have the right properties, avoid side effects, drug interactions, and rebound problems.”

Increasing scientific literacy

“You can make the best vaccine in the world, you can make the best medicines in the world, but if people don’t take them, they are useless,” Chanda said.

“We have a job as scientists… to better inform the public about what we are doing and what the real threats are.”

The challenge in the United States, Mandel said, is the need for community-based testing to “test people quickly within…timeframes for an antiviral to actually be useful.”

He said diagnostics in the current pandemic is fighting “stimulus inertia” as those without good reasons to get tested for COVID-19 — for travel or work, for example — stop testing, leading to a wider spread of the disease. because most people don’t know to take antivirals.

“Asymptomatic people don’t like being tested,” Mandel said. “This is a huge challenge for us. … How do we feel about this kind of social phenomena?”

Another, more surprising, barrier to getting antiviral drugs for infected people is healthcare workers, Mandel said. December data shows that “only about 20 percent of diagnosed COVID cases in risk categories should receive [COVID-19 antiviral] Paxlovid is really prescribed [the medicine] their healthcare worker” for fear of a recurrence of the disease, he said.

“The only way to overcome this problem [is] to make diagnostics ubiquitous,” Mandel said, for example by making it easier to get a test in line at a local store or by sending tests to extended family members of an infected person.

The way forward also includes innovative manufacturing, he said. “We have invested in some technology… that can print 16 million diagnostic tests per day, [which] provides a very low cost.”

readiness programs

Developing pandemic preparedness programs to minimize the negative economic impact around the world is another key, Chand said.

According to him, many programs for the current pandemic “were implemented in an uncoordinated way.” He added that a plan needs to be developed for the next one, “without much struggle and piecemeal, ad hoc decisions.”

Dieffenbach admitted that “If you ask anyone on the street, COVID is over. … The challenge we face is to keep the energy and pressure to move forward so that we can actually continue to fight the pandemic and really accelerate some of these pandemic preparedness programs in the meantime.”

Dieffenbach said a comprehensive pandemic response plan will close key gaps in research on major virus families, accelerate the development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics for pathogens, and coordinate global action by medicine, scientists and industry.

Chanda said CAMPP is working to bring together the best virologists, structural biologists, immunologists, biochemists and others to develop treatments for coronaviruses, flaviviruses (such as Zika and West Nile), paramyxoviruses (such as measles, mumps and some respiratory diseases). infections), bunyaviruses. (which cause fever and are carried by insects or rodents), togaviruses (such as equine encephalitis and rubella), and filoviruses (Ebola and Marburg) are the families most likely to cause the next pandemic.

He added that the researchers are advancing two missions of CAMPP: the creation of new therapeutics and the innovative discovery of antivirals. ◆

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