COVID MoonShot - Taking fragments to impact

The very large M^pro screening experiment yielded an exceptionally rich set of information, with extensive opportunities for fragment growing and merging;  we are thus anxious to ensure the high quality data is as effective as possible at seeding anti-COVID-19 efforts around the world.

We have joined forces in a fully open initiative - the COVID MoonShot - to drive these results as far towards clinical impact as possible, by crowdsourcing molecule design from medicinal chemists worldwide and converting these into physical compounds and assays.

To date (16th June 2020), over 500 MoonShot compounds have been screened in the XChem lab, in a fluorescence-based assay by our collaborators at the Weizmann Institute (Israel), as well as in a mass-spec-based assay run by the Schofield group (CRL, University of Oxford).

Additionally, on the 11th of May, the first wave of follow-up structures was released. These, and all our other Mpro structures, can be viewed online in our Fragalysis viewer.

For continous updates on assay results and structure release please consult CCD Vault or the MoonShot web page.

If you are interested in providing physical compounds to the Moonshot, there is now a fully-defined process for getting them tested. First register them on the PostEra website; then read here to find details on formatting and shipping.

Alternatively if you want to send Mpro follow-up compounds for XChem screening only, please provide them as DMSO solutions. We recommend 4 uL at 100mM or higher in 1536ldv (LP-0400/LP-0400-BC) labcyte plate (more information available here). If you don’t have echo-compatible plates, any other plate type or format is possible, as long as the sample is completely diluted and shipped on dry-ice.

Most imporantly, please send us the corresponding plate map with compound ID, SMILES string, concentration and volume following this format.