Pan-coronavirus antiviral unveiled

On Mar. 25 at the American Chemical Society Spring 2025 meeting, Ed Griffen of MedChemica disclosed the structure of a pancoronavirus antiviral (ASAP-0017445) that targets the main protease (Mpro) of the two different coronaviruses that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and COVID-19. The work to build ASAP-0017445 was performed by researchers who are part of the ASAP (artificial intelligence–driven structure-enabled antiviral platform) Discovery Consortium , where Griffen heads up lead optimization. The ASAP team has been building on open-science antiviral discovery efforts started by the COVID Moonshot team during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic . Over the past 5 years, chemists around the world who participated in the open-science projects have proposed thousands of compound structures that might target the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Griffen explained that MERS-CoV is also a pathogen of concern for future pandemics. In addition, the virus presents a danger of recombination with SARS-CoV-2. So