How the Ukraine Invasion Almost Wounded a Covid Pill

○ Many researchers at Enamine, a key contract drug research group in Kyiv, have had to flee

- Naomi Kresge

On the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, chemist Tetiana Matviyuk worked late into the night at her Kyiv office. By the time she wrapped up around 10:30 p.m., she’d signed out of a Zoom meeting with a global team of scientists working on a new Covid-19 treatment. The day before, she’d shipped crucial compounds to colleagues in the U.K. and Israel, as her team was closing in on the project’s finish line and their Champagne celebration. But instead of euphoria, Matviyuk was filled with dread. She called her husband on her drive home.

“I said, ‘I’m feeling that something bad can happen,’ ” says Matviyuk, principal scientist in medicinal chemistry and computer drug design at contract research group Enamine Ltd. in Kyiv. “He was just laughing at me, that I’m crazy and too nervous, and keep calm—everything will be fine.”

At 5:30 a.m. the next day, Matviyuk was awakened by a colleague calling to say the invasion had begun. From the moment the first air-raid sirens went off, it was clear that Ukraine-based scientific work in the push to develop a cheaper Covid treatment for use in poorer countries would take a hit. What’s more, the war will likely disrupt other drug discovery projects across the globe, many of which rely on Enamine to provide chemical compounds for testing.

“Everybody uses them for their early-drug discovery projects,” says Ben Perry, a medicinal chemist at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative in Geneva and one of the leaders of the Covid pill project for poorer nations Matviyuk is working on, dubbed Moonshot. “It has a huge impact.”