The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health a $65 million grant establishing an Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Center to develop oral antivirals that can combat pandemic-level viruses like COVID-19. The center builds upon and is tightly affiliated with UNC’s Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Institute (READDI).
The READDI-AViDD Center (READDI-AC), one of nine established by the NIH, is an integrated public-private partnership with a renowned, interdisciplinary research team of experts led by Ralph S. Baric, PhD, member of the IGHID and William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology.
The team will apply cutting-edge technologies to develop oral therapies that target viral families with high potential to cause a pandemic in the future.