Georgina Ferry interviews Annette von Delft, Translational Scientist (Centre for Medicines Discovery), 16 June 2022.
Topics discussed include (00:00:43) early interest in medical science, including studies in medicine and music in Germany, PhD at Oxford relating to vaccine development, interest in infectious diseases, work in sexual health and HIV clinics; (00:03:35) research interests, particularly relating to the development of drug or vaccine technology and resulting patient access; (00:04:30) main research methods; (00:06:15) the evolving nature of drug discovery, Medicines Patent Pool, patient cohorts in medium income countries and access to COVID drugs; (00:08:50) neglected diseases, patient cohorts and access to treatments for neglected diseases; (00:12:17) open science, particularly open drug discovery and the Structural Genomics Consortium; (00:19:57) first awareness of COVID-19, exposure to COVID-19 in early 2020, work of Science Group at the Diamond Light Source and work with the Chinese research group who worked on the SARS-CoV-2 main protease structure; (00:25:17) SARS-CoV-2 protease; (00:27:29) protease inhibitors, polymerase, compound development; (00:29:30) fragment screen experiment at Diamond Light Source [Frank von Delft's group] to look at the construct of the SARS-CoV-2 protease; (00:35:00) crowdsourcing of ideas and techniques for Moonshot, collaboration with Nir Weizmann of the Weizmann Institute, Chris Schofield, Alpha Lee at PostEra.ai, John Chodera and Enamine; (00:38:40) use of Twitter by the scientific community in the expansion of the Moonshot project; (00:42:40) AVD's role in the Moonshot project, work with Nicole Zitzmann and William James to set up a screening facility, coordination of cellular screening; (00:46:00) main outcomes of the project, funding and grant writing, in-kind contributions for novel drug discovery, ADME testing; (00:54:00) amount of compounds tested, pre-clinical scale-up; (00:58:38) envisaged future use of compound in treating COVID patients; (01:02:58) AVD's view of Moonshot as a model in terms of future drug discovery; (01:06:18) changes in attitude and approach to work as a result of the pandemic.
