On Mar. 23, 2020, Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory (DRIVE), and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics announced a collaboration to rapidly advance DRIVE’s EIDD-2801, a promising oral COVID-19 treatment, into human testing. DRIVE is a not-for-profit biotechnology company wholly owned by Emory University, and Ridgeback is a closely-held biotechnology company based in Miami.

This collaboration combines Ridgeback’s unique experience advancing drug development efforts in the midst of the Ebola virus disease outbreak with the experience that the DRIVE executive team has in antiviral drug development and commercialization.

Under the collaboration, Ridgeback has exclusively licensed DRIVE’s EIDD-2801, a promising potential coronavirus treatment for COVID-19, which has broad spectrum activity against a number of diseases of extreme public health concern, including influenza, SARS, MERS, chikungunya, and equine encephalitis (VEE and EEE). EIDD-2801 prevents the replication of multiple strains of coronavirus in vitro, and has been shown to have potent activity against SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV in animal models of infection. Ridgeback Biotherapeutics will be responsible for advancing this promising therapeutic through clinical development and ensuring that EIDD-2801 is available during the current pandemic.