Discovery of New Zika Protease and Polymerase Inhibitors through the Open Science Collaboration Project OpenZika.

The Zika virus (ZIKV) is a neurotropic arbovirus considered a global threat to public health. Although there have been several efforts in drug discovery projects for ZIKV in recent years, there are still no antiviral drugs approved to date. Here, we describe the results of a global collaborative crowdsourced open science project, the OpenZika project, from IBM's World Community Grid (WCG), which integrates different computational and experimental strategies for advancing a drug candidate for ZIKV.

Discovery of an imidazonaphthyridine and a riminophenazine as potent anti-Zika virus agents through a replicon-based high-throughput screening.

The 2015/16 Zika virus (ZIKV) epidemic led to almost 1 million confirmed cases in 84 countries and was associated to the development of congenital microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome. More recently, a ZIKV African lineage was identified in Brazil raising concerns about a future outbreak. The long-term consequences of viral infection emphasizes the need for the development of effective anti-ZIKV drugs.