Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CPI) has announced the discovery of CPI-1058, a broad-spectrum antiviral effective against the Sudan and Bundibugyo strains of the Ebola virus.
RALEIGH, NC, UNITED STATES, September 24, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The most recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda involves a related Bundibugyo virus. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of September 22, there have been over 7,800 confirmed cases and more than 3,780 confirmed deaths, yielding a case fatality rate of 48%. The outbreak’s rapid expansion, combined with the dismantling of USAID and the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO, is further worsening an already critical situation. Currently, no approved vaccine or antiviral exists for treating Bundibugyo virus. Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. brings more than ten years of experience in developing small-molecule antivirals for neglected diseases such as Ebola, relying on non-dilutive funding from the National Institutes of Health.
“Unfortunately, it is left to a small company like mine to discover molecules for neglected diseases because the bigger pharmaceutical companies do not have a way to make money out of sporadic outbreaks of diseases like Ebola. Also, you are unlikely to see any of the trillion dollar valued AI companies doing this work. They do not have a clue about drug discovery nor the attention span to stick with something for more than a few seconds.” said Dr. Sean Ekins CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
“We have identified a small molecule using our own published machine learning models for inhibition of Ebola and recently tested this molecule in vitro against Sudan and Bundibugyo using external collaborations with academic and NIAID funded labs. These data indicate that CPI-1058 is a sub micromolar inhibitor of both Sudan and Bundibugyo viruses. In addition, CPI-1058 is an inhibitor of Zaire, Marburg and other viruses.”
“Our ultimate aim is to bring this treatment to patients to help stem the spread of the virus and then further develop it for stockpiling by the USA and other countries.” “We are certainly open to working with US government organizations like BARDA, DARPA etc. but these appear to have no role or influence during the current outbreak”. “We would therefore be interested in working with any non-US organizations that could assist us in applying CPI-1058 in the current outbreak and help prepare for the next one, because that is unfortunately inevitable” stated Dr. Ekins.
About Collaborations Pharmaceuticals:
Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has an active pipeline of molecules for infectious and rare diseases with considerable expertise in antiviral drug discovery. This work is aided by our inhouse software including Assay Central® software for data curation and machine learning as well as curated model collections such as MegaTox®, MegaTrans® and MegaPredict®. Most recently we have developed MegaSyn for generative drug design. For more information, http://www.collaborations.com/
Sean Ekins
Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
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