Grant investigators: Chris Somerville and Heather Youngs
This page was reviewed but not written by the grant investigators. UCSF staff also reviewed this page prior to publication.
The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $880,000 to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to support experiments testing several antiviral drugs. The work will be led by Dr. Raul Andino, Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UCSF. This grant will allow Dr. Andino to carry out tests of the effectiveness of two commercial-quality drugs against five different viruses. We consider this research important to better understanding the broad spectrum antiviral potential of these compounds, which we believe could potentially be used to minimize the effects of a bioterrorism attack or pandemic virus outbreak.
This grant falls within our interest in funding scientific research, and is additionally related to our biosecurity and pandemic preparedness focus area.
Update: In June 2018, we added $180,000 to the original award amount, and in October 2018 we added $380,000. The “grant amount” above has been updated to reflect this.