# Project 5 - Antivirals against pathogenic Enterovirus

> **NIH NIH U19** · EMORY UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $2,175,501

## Abstract

Project Summary – Project 5
The mission of Project 5 is to develop orally available direct-acting clinical candidates to prevent or treat the
significant morbidity and mortality associated with enterovirus infections. It is estimated that enteroviruses are
responsible for ~20 million infections in the U.S. and more than one billion worldwide each year. There are
currently no effective antiviral therapeutics available to prevent or treat non-poliovirus enterovirus infections. This
project will fully characterize orally-available ribonucleosides with potent inhibitory activity against clinically
relevant enteroviruses and determine the efficacy of these compounds in physiologically relevant in vitro and in
vivo models. Studies of enterovirus antiviral therapeutics have been limited by the lack of suitable models that
recapitulate the unique cellular and immunologic features of the cells and tissues targeted by these viruses in
vivo. The studies proposed in this project will utilize physiologically relevant in vitro human and in vivo mouse
models developed by the lead of this project. These models include primary human airway cultures, primary
stem cell-derived human enteroid models, human spinal cord organoids, and humanized mouse models that
recapitulate many aspects of enterovirus clinical disease. Given that these studies will utilize physiologically
relevant models, the compounds identified will be highly significant and clinically optimized, as our systems will
model enterovirus infections of highly relevant tissue types in vitro and in vivo. This project will directly synergize
with multiple AC/DC Cores and Projects contained within this U19 application. AC/DC Cores will direct the
identification of lead compounds that will be rigorously tested for anti-enterovirus activity in the in vitro and in
vivo models described above. The findings from this project will also directly influence these Cores, which will
work with data generated by this project to further identify leads. As many of these same leads will be tested by
other projects against other RNA viruses, this built-in synergy will allow for direct integration of leads across
diverse viral families. The studies proposed in Project 5 thus contribute directly to the Center’s mission of
generating applicable clinical candidates to address RNA viruses of major pandemic potential.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10513946
- **Project number:** 1U19AI171403-01
- **Recipient organization:** EMORY UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Carolyn B Coyne
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $2,175,501
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-05-16 → 2026-10-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10513946

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10513946, Project 5 - Antivirals against pathogenic Enterovirus (1U19AI171403-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-28 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10513946. Licensed CC0.

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