Drug development company Medivir AB (Nasdaq Stockholm:MVIR) on Monday announced a research collaboration with the Drug Discovery and Development Platform (DDD) and SciLifeLab to find potential inhibitors of the main protease of SARS CoV-2.

DDD has access to Medivir's unique proprietary protease-targeted compound library to identify putative inhibitors and evaluate active compounds as potential drug development candidates. Data for up to 100 top-inhibitors will be released on-line and will be freely available for drug development to combat Covid-19. The essential non-structural protein, Mpro, is reportedly required for virus replication.

This COVID-19 research programme is reportedly led by Kristian Sandberg, associate professor at Uppsala University, co-director of SciLifeLab's DDD Platform and principal investigator of the project Nevermore COVID. The project is part of the national COVID-19 research program at SciLifeLab, which is funded by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation with a total of SEK50m.

(EUR1=SEK10.4775)