READDI, in Collaboration with Chimerix, to Present at International Conference on Antiviral Research

Preclinical data from the Company’s CMX521 program will be featured in a late-breaking oral presentation session at the International Conference on Antiviral Research (ICAR) on Wednesday, March 23, 2022 from 12:15 – 1:00 pm PT. CMX521 was found to significantly reduce lung viral titer and clinical symptoms in a SARS-CoV-2 mouse model.

DURHAM, NC -- Chimerix (NASDAQ:CMRX), in collaboration with the Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiative (READDI) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, today announced that preclinical data from the Company’s CMX521 program will be featured in a late-breaking oral presentation session at the International Conference on Antiviral Research (ICAR) on Wednesday, March 23, 2022 from 12:15 – 1:00 pm PT.

“While we focus on the advancement of our oncology pipeline and progress toward a TEMBEXA procurement agreement with BARDA, this collaboration with READDI allows us to efficiently evaluate our antiviral library to identify molecules that might have value to patients,” said Mike Sherman, Chief Executive Officer of Chimerix. “The joint effort between the research teams at both Chimerix and READDI has led to these very promising early results in an animal model that we believe supports rapid advancement of CMX521 to clinical proof-of-concept against SARS-CoV-2 where there remains a need for novel therapies with improved efficacy, safety and/or resistance profiles. This agent is particularly interesting in that it has demonstrated an attractive safety profile in a prior Phase 1 dose escalation trial in healthy volunteers.”
“These compelling data encourage us to further investigate the potential of CMX521 as a prophylactic and as a therapeutic for SARS-CoV-2 infection,” said John Bamforth, PhD of READDI and Director of Eshelman Institute for Innovation at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. “We are very excited about these data and also look forward to READDI’s ongoing mission to identify novel antivirals active against entire families of viruses, including coronaviruses, flaviviruses and alphaviruses.”


Read the full news release here.