Fraunhofer iCAIR™ Is Breaking New Ground In The Development Of Antiviral Drugs

Hanover, Germany /PRNewswire/ - Each year, about one billion people worldwide are affected by influenza epidemics, over five million of these with serious outcomes. Anti-influenza vaccines are not always effective, because the viruses keep modifying their surface structures, thereby evading previously effective vaccines. In the research consortium Fraunhofer iCAIR™, German and Australian scientists are breaking new paths in the development of anti-infectives: they develop antiviral drugs and test their efficacy in precision-cut lung slices (PCLS) – vital human lung slices which allow to model early phases of viral lung infection in the laboratory.

In Fraunhofer iCAIR™, the Fraunhofer International Consortium for Anti-Infective Research, scientists of the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM, Australia's Institute for Glycomics (IfG) of Griffith University, Queensland, and the Hannover Medical School have teamed up. They identify therapeutic targets, develop drug candidates, and evaluate their efficacy in special test systems such as PCLS. During this year's International Conference of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) in Dallas, TX (USA), the researchers showed that this test system can be used for efficacy testing of novel anti-influenza drugs. They demonstrated that zanamivir, an approved neuraminidase inhibitor developed by the Australian researchers, has the same antiviral effect in human PCLS infected with influenza as in the intact human organism. The Fraunhofer scientists are currently performing preclinical efficacy testing of new antivirals developed at IfG in the PCLS model.

The overall aim of Fraunhofer iCAIR™ is to overcome one of the biggest obstacles to developing new drugs: the gap in the drug development chain arising between the discovery of new, potentially beneficial substances – often by universities or small companies – and the clinical development up to approval of a new drug, carried out by pharmaceutical industry. Newly identified drug candidates have to undergo preclinical testing in relevant and predictive test systems before they can advance to clinical testing. Fraunhofer iCAIR™, with its broad interdisciplinary expertise ranging from basic research to preclinical testing, aims to bridge this gap in the drug development process and to help meet the urgent need for new anti-infective drugs.

The aims, possibilities and services offered by Fraunhofer iCAIR™ will be presented at the Fraunhofer booth in the German Pavillon at BIO International Convention, the world's largest biotechnology trade fair, taking place in Philadelphia, PA (USA) from June 3 to 6.