Pandemic Readiness: Multiplatform Therapeutic Screening Strategy

This symposium session will showcase a flexible, end-to-end pipeline designed to accelerate the discovery of antivirals and immune-based countermeasures against current and future pandemic threats. As part of the “From Surveillance To Vaccines” research program, our sub-project delivers ready-to-use screening tools—from biosafe viral surrogates to animal and human ex vivo platforms—ensuring that candidate therapeutics can be triaged, validated, and scaled within weeks of pathogen emergence. Each deliverable is built on standardized, modular protocols that can be retooled for novel viruses. Pseudovirus backbones and replicon platforms can incorporate emerging spike or polymerase variants within days. The CHIKV arthritis model informs joint-pathology assays for other arthritogenic viruses. Our HLA-peptide system can pivot to any new viral proteome by updating peptide libraries and leveraging existing ex vivo workflows. By embedding these adaptable platforms within a multiproject framework, we compress the timeline from pathogen discovery to therapeutic candidate nomination—thereby fortifying our collective capacity to counteract future pandemics.