Wyss Institute, Harvard University – Don Ingber

Open Philanthropy awarded a grant of $2,500,000 to Harvard University to support research on conformational inhibitors with antiviral activity.

The 2-year grant to Don Ingber at the Wyss Institute, Harvard University, will support development of broad-spectrum antiviral drugs against coronavirus and influenza. The team will use in silico and in vitro techniques to screen for drugs that bind conserved motifs and disrupt conformational change in viral proteins that are required for function. Targets include those that enable the virus to enter cells such as the HA protein in influenza and spike proteins in coronavirus.