---
title: "COVID Moonshot"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID_Moonshot"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:48:52.653806+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The design submissions were stored in Collaborative Drug Discovery's CDD Vault, a database used for large-scale management of chemical structures, experimental protocols and experimental results.
Alpha Lee and Matt Robinson brought computational expertise from PostEra to the project. PostEra used techniques from artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop analysis tools for computational drug discovery, chemical synthesis and biochemical assays. When COVID Moonshot's appeal resulted in not hundreds but thousands of responses, they built a platform capable of triaging large numbers of compounds and designing routes for their synthetic formation.
Supercomputer access was provided through the COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium, accelerating the speed at which designs could be examined and compared. The distributed supercomputing initiative Folding@home has carried out multiple sprints  to model novel protein structures and  target desirable structures as a part of COVID Moonshot.
Many of the criteria for selecting drug candidates were determined by the group's goals. An ideal drug candidate would be effective in treating COVID-19. It also would be easily and cheaply made, so that as many countries and companies as possible could produce and distribute it. The ingredients to make it should be easy to obtain, and the processes involved should be as simple as possible. A drug shouldn't require special handling (like refrigeration) and it should be easy to administer (a pill rather than an injection).
In a matter of months, researchers were able to identify more than 200 promising crystal structure designs and to begin creating and testing them in the lab.
Chris Schofield at the University of Oxford  synthesized and tested 4 of the most promising of the novel designed peptides to demonstrate their ability to block and inhibit Mpro.
Freely available data from COVID Moonshot has also been used to assess the predictive ability of docking scores in suggesting the potency of SARS-CoV-2 M-pro inhibitors.
To go beyond the design phase, possible drug candidates must be created and tested for both effectiveness and safety in animal and human trials. The Wellcome Trust has committed to key initial funding to support this process. Synthesis of candidates is being carried out in parallel, at sites including Ukraine (Enamine), India (Sai Life Sciences) and China (WuXi).   Annette von Delft of the University of Oxford and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)'s Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) is leading pre-clinical small molecule research related to COVID Moonshot.

== Potential for antiviral treatments ==
COVID Moonshot anticipates that they will select three pre-clinical candidates by March 2022, to be followed by preclinical safety and toxicology testing and identification of needed chemistry, manufacturing and control (CMC) steps. Based on that data, the most promising candidate will be chosen. Phase-1 clinical trials, the first stage of testing in human subjects, are projected to begin by June 2023.
Unlike a vaccine, which increases immunity and protects against catching an infectious disease, an antiviral drug treats someone who is already sick by attacking the virus and countering its effects, potentially lessening both symptoms and further transmission.
Mpro is present in other coronaviruses that cause disease, so an antiviral drug that targets Mpro may also be effective against coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS and future pandemics.
Mpro does not mutate easily, so it is less likely that variants of the virus will adapt that can avoid the effects of such a drug.

== Open science ==

Among the many participants in the COVID Moonshot project are the
University of Oxford,
University of Cambridge,
Diamond Light Source,
Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel,
Temple University,
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,
PostEra,
University of Johannesburg,
and the
Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) in Switzerland.
Support for the project has come from a variety of philanthropic sources including the Wellcome Trust,
COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator (CTA),
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
LifeArc,
and through crowdsourcing.
Because COVID Moonshot is based in open science and shared open data, any drug that the project develops can be manufactured and sold by whoever wishes to produce it, worldwide. Countries that are unable to buy or manufacture expensive licensed drugs would therefore have the opportunity to  produce their own supplies, and competition between suppliers is likely to result in greater availability and reduced prices for consumers.
This would circumvent issues around the time needed to vaccinate people worldwide.  As of July 2021, it was estimated that at current rates, this was likely to take several years.  Inequities in distribution will increase both the spreading of the virus and the risk that  new and more dangerous variants will emerge.
Supporters of the COVID Moonshot initiative have argued that open-science drug discovery is an essential model for combating both current and future pandemics, and that the prevention of the spread of pandemic diseases is an essential public service.

== References ==

== External links ==
Official website