Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Apr 8;8(4):713-720.
doi: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.1c00527. Epub 2022 Mar 14.

The Pandemic Response Box─Accelerating Drug Discovery Efforts after Disease Outbreaks

Kirandeep Samby  1 , Dominique Besson  1 , Anirban Dutta  2 , Buddhadev Patra  2 , Angelique Doy  1 , Paul Glossop  3 , James Mills  3 , Gavin Whitlock  3 , Rob Hooft van Huijsduijnen  1 , Alessandra Monaco  4 , Graeme Bilbe  4 , Charles Mowbray  4 , Benjamin Perry  4 , Anna Adam  1 , Timothy N C Wells  1 , Paul A Willis  1
Affiliations

The Pandemic Response Box─Accelerating Drug Discovery Efforts after Disease Outbreaks

Kirandeep Samby et al. ACS Infect Dis. .

Abstract

The current Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the need for a more coordinated and forward-looking investment in the search for new medicines targeting emerging health care threats. Repositioning currently approved drugs is a popular approach to any new emerging disease, but it represents a first wave of response. Behind this would be a second wave of more specifically designed therapies based on activities against specific molecular targets or in phenotypic assays. Following the successful deployment and uptake of previous open access compound collections, we assembled the Pandemic Response Box, a collection of 400 compounds to facilitate drug discovery in emerging infectious disease. These are based on public domain information on chemotypes currently in discovery and early development which have been shown to have useful activities and were prioritized by medicinal chemistry experts. They are freely available to the community as a pharmacological test set with the understanding that data will be shared rapidly in the public domain.

Keywords: Pandemics; antibacterials; antifungals; antivirals; drug discovery; screening.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Workflow for triage of ChEMBL compounds.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Selection of the final compound set (HBA: hydrogen bond acceptors, HBD: hydrogen bond donors, PAINS: pan assay interference compounds).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Composition of the Pandemic Response Box, by disease area.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Composition of the Pandemic Response Box, by stage of development.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Mode of action for compounds included in the Pathogen Response Box by (A) antivirals, (B) antifungals, and (C) antibacterials. For (A), the categories not labeled in the pie are all 1%.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Distribution of the Pandemic Response Box compound set, by region.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Pathogen diversity for screening of Pandemic Response Box.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Number of PubMed-listed publications, by year, that cite one of the three Boxes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Stone H.; Sacks L.; Tiernan R.; Duggal M.; Sheils T.; Southall N. Collaborative Use Repurposing Engine (CURE): FDA-NCATS/NIH Effort to Capture the Global Clinical Experience of Drug Repurposing to Facilitate Development of New Treatments for Neglected and Emerging Infectious Diseases. Open forum infectious diseases 2017, 4 (suppl_1), S12–S12. 10.1093/ofid/ofx162.030. - DOI

    2. (acccessed 8/18/2020).

    1. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services . Report on NIH Funding vs. Global Burden of Disease. https://report.nih.gov/info_disease_burden.aspx (2015).
    1. Global, regional, and national disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 359 diseases and injuries and healthy life expectancy (HALE) for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Lancet 2018, 392 (10159), 1859–1922. 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32335-3. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Spangenberg T.; Burrows J. N.; Kowalczyk P.; McDonald S.; Wells T. N.; Willis P. The open access malaria box: a drug discovery catalyst for neglected diseases. PLoS One 2013, 8 (6), e62906.10.1371/journal.pone.0062906. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Van Voorhis W. C.; Adams J. H.; Adelfio R.; Ahyong V.; Akabas M. H.; Alano P.; Alday A.; Alemán Resto Y.; Alsibaee A.; Alzualde A.; Andrews K. T.; Avery S. V.; Avery V. M.; Ayong L.; Baker M.; Baker S.; Ben Mamoum C.; Bhatia S.; Bickle Q.; Bounaadja L.; Bowling T.; Bosch J.; Boucher L. E.; Boyom F. F.; Brea J.; Brennan M.; Burton A.; Caffrey C. R.; Camarda G.; Carrasquilla M.; Carter D.; Belen Cassera M.; Cheng K. C.-C.; Chindaudomsate W.; Chubb A.; Colon B. L.; Colón-López D. C.; Corbett Y.; Crowther G. J.; Cowan N.; D’Alessandro S.; Le Dang N.; Delves M.; DeRisi J. L.; Du A. Y.; Duffy S.; Abd El-Salam El-Sayed S.; Ferdig M. T.; Ferreira R. S.; Fernández Robledo J. A.; Fidock D. A.; Florent I.; Fokou P. V. T.; Galstian A.; Gamo F. J.; Gokool S.; Gold B.; Golub T.; Goldgof G. M.; Guha R.; Guiguemde W. A.; Gural N.; Guy R. K.; Hansen M. A. E.; Hanson K. K.; Hemphill A.; Hooft van Huijsduijnen R.; Horii T.; Horrocks P.; Hughes T. B.; Huston C.; Igarashi I.; Ingram-Sieber K.; Itoe M. A.; Jadhav A.; Jensen A. N.; Jensen L. T.; Jiang R. H.; Kaiser A.; Keiser J.; Ketas T.; Kicka S.; Kim S.; Kirk K.; Kumar V.; Kyle D. E.; Lafuente M. J.; Landfear S.; Lee N.; Lee S.; Lehane A.; Li F.; Little D.; Liu L.; Llinás M.; Loza M. I.; Lubar A.; Lucantoni L.; Lucet I.; Maes L.; Mancama D.; Mansour N. R.; March S.; McGowan S.; Vera I. M.; Meister S.; Mercer L.; Mestres J.; Mfopa A. N.; Misra R. N.; Moon S.; Moore J. P.; Müller J.; Muriana A.; Nakazawa Hewitt S.; Nare B.; athan C. N.; Narraidoo N.; Nawaratna S.; Ojo K. K.; Ortiz D.; Panic G.; Papadatos G.; Parapini S.; Patra K.; Pham N.; Prats S.; Plouffe D. M.; Poulsen S.-A.; Pradhan A.; Quevedo C.; Quinn R. J.; Rice C. A.; Rizk M. A.; Morais Rodrigues da Costa F.; Ruecker A.; St.Onge R.; Samra J.; Sanders N. G.; Schlecht U.; Schmitt M.; Sinden R.; Silvestrini F.; Smith D. A.; Soldati T.; Spitzmüller A.; Stamm S. M.; Sullivan D. J.; Sullivan W.; Suresh S.; Suzuki B. M.; Suzuki Y.; Swamidass S. J.; Taramelli D.; Tchokouaha L. R. Y.; Theron A.; Thomas D.; Tonissen K. F.; Townson S.; Tripathi A. K.; Trofimov V.; Udenze K. O.; Ullah I.; Vallieres C.; Vigil E.; Villela F. S.; Vinetz J. M.; Vinh P. V.; Vu H.; Watanabe N.-a.; Weatherby K.; White P. M.; Wilks A. F.; Winzeler E. A.; Wojcik E.; Wree M.; Wu W.; Yokoyama N.; Zollo P. H. A.; Abla N.; Blasco B.; Burrows J.; Laleu B.; Leroy D.; Spangenberg T.; Wells T. N.; Willis P. Open source drug discovery with the Malaria Box compound collection for neglected diseases and beyond. PLOS Pathogens 2016, 12 (7), e1005763.10.1371/journal.ppat.1005763. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types