Cidara Cloudbreak and Antiviral Conjugates

Segment Description: Leslie Tari, PhD, the senior vice president of research at Cidara Therapeutics, discusses the company's Cloudbreak antiviral initiatives.

Interview transcript (modified slightly for readability):

Contagion®: Can you tell us about Cidara’s Cloudbreak antiviral program?

Dr. Tari: "Our Cloudbreak program is built on a concept from oncology where we have...molecules that are conjugates of a surface-targeting antimicrobial agent that's coupled with what we call an effector moiety that recruits the immune system to the site of infection. So we get killing from the antimicrobial agent and then we get an orthogonal mechanism of killing from the immune system, so that's a strategy we use to take advantage of these synergistic mechanisms and also to decrease the probability of resistance because you have multiple mechanisms of action. Our antiviral conjugates are stable conjugates of an antiviral agent with the FC domain of a human antibody that extends the half-life of these molecules. What we basically generate with these are molecules that are potent antivirals that have an antibody-like half-life so they could be used as long acting prophylactic agents or they could be used in treatment as well."

The study, “Cloudbreak: A Novel Approach for the Treatment and Prevention of Influenza Virus,” was presented in an oral session on Monday, April 15, 2019, at ECCMID 2019 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.