RaDVaC launches AI-based antivirals approach
August 21, 2025
Even the best vaccines take 7 to 10 days to mount a preliminary adaptive immune response. And full protection often takes additional weeks and boosters to develop. In the event of an outbreak of a serious pathogen, immediate protection is paramount—even if the protection is incomplete or imperfect.
Antivirals can be effective immediately but the most effective ones are tailor designed for a specific pathogen. However, many drugs and chemical compounds can individually act as weak to moderately effective antiviral compounds against pathogens they were not designed to target—and in combination they can be even more effective. The number of possible combinations is enormous but AI is being used in other contexts to efficiently recognize the most potent repurposed drugs and combinations, and we are building on these advancements.
RaDVaC is developing an AI-based public server for the selection of rapid deployment antivirals. The predicted antivirals will consist of combinations of repurposed, regulatory approved drugs and generally recognized as safe (GRAS) compounds. We hope to have a working version in a few months for beta testing.
Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RaDVaC) moves to Prime and Spike and discontinues use of chitosan-peptide vaccine formulations
June 24, 2024
Due to cost, availability, and published efficacy data of another vaccine design, RaDVaC has discontinued its use of its original chitosan and peptide vaccine platform, and has replaced it with the “Prime and Spike” approach published by Mao and colleagues.
From the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RaDVaC) has designed, refined, self-produced and self-administered multiple generations of chitosan and peptide nasal vaccine formulations. However, many people reported difficulty in having the peptides synthesized. Plus, although the per dose cost of the peptides was low if ordered at large scale, small-scale production was expensive, and overall production costs were minimally $1000, and typically more. And for various reasons, it was also challenging to assess efficacy.
To support more rapid deployment and widespread adoption, RaDVaC has adopted the vaccine platform published by Mao and colleagues of the Iwasaki lab at Yale. Their extremely simple, off-the-shelf vaccine design consists of a single component—a SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein trimer—and no adjuvant. They showed that the vaccine elicits robust T-cell and B-cell immune responses. RaDVaC has experimented with this vaccine and because it consists of a single, relatively inexpensive and commercially available ingredient, we have adopted it as our default nasal vaccine. We currently use it in combination with commercial injectable vaccines in a standard prime and spike approach: the injected vaccine is followed a few weeks later by self-administration of the nasal vaccine.