Broad-spectrum Antiviral siRNAs: Influenza Strains Targeted by Anticipation

Fighting emerging viruses has been a major challenge in the development of novel therapeutics.

With the current global changes and massive modification of the biosphere, the issue will surely increase in the future.

To overcome this challenge, we will demonstrate on influenza that we are capable to produce active antiviral against a strain that is not yet existing.

The BARISTA project will allow to develop a novel therapeutic approach allowing to preserve therapeutic activities over a wide range of influenza strains and we will demonstrate its efficacy on the influenza strain of the next outreach.

This achievement will be obtained by guiding the design of chemically optimized siRNA by detailed NMR structural analysis.

Those molecules will be tested both in vitro and ex vivo and their broad-spectrum activity will be demonstrated on past, present and future influenza strains.

This project will therefore open the way to therapies that can be designed and optimized, even before the appearance of a novel strain, providing an invaluable help in fighting emerging viruses.