Project 4 is a public-private partnership led by Dr. Olivia Goethals at Janssen Pharmaceuticals with academic researchers at UNC, OHSU, and SLU. This team is focused on finding novel inhibitors of the flavivirus family, which includes multiple viruses that are a significant threat to human health, such as Dengue, West Nile, Yellow Fever, and Zika viruses. There is a critical need for new flavivirus drug development, as there are no direct-acting antivirals approved to treat or prevent these infections.
Project 4 is focused on three targets: the NS5 RNA-dependent-RNA-polymerase (RdRp), the NS3 helicase, and the NS2B-NS3 protease. To learn more about these enzyme classes, visit our Research Overview.