“New drug could cure nearly any viral infection,” read the headline on MIT News nine years ago that heralded the arrival of DRACO, a new antiviral approach that vanquished every single virus that it came up against.

Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer(DRACO) was promised to do to viruses what antibiotics had done to bacteria — turn life threatening viral infections into easily treatable conditions^[1]http://news.mit.edu/2011/antiviral-0810?page=2.

DRACO acts as an antiviral “kill switch” by identifying infected cells and killing those cells to terminate the infection.

The drug’s remarkable success is attributed to its ability to target a type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses.

Bioengineer Todd Rider and his team at MIT’s Lincoln Lab tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever^[2]Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Therapeutics
Todd H. Rider ,Christina E. Zook,Tara L. Boettcher,Scott T. Wick,Jennifer S. Pancoast,Benjamin D. Zusman
Published: July 27, 2011https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0022572.

And some researchers believe that DRACO could take on the SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that’s causing the current global COVID-19 pandemic^[3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7158880/.

You’d think that national health agencies and pharmaceutical companies would be rushing to mass manufacture a DRACO as a weapon against COVID-19. But you’d be wrong.

In fact, the development of DRACO had ground to a halt after falling into the well-known “Valley of Death”, in which many promising new drugs struggle to find funding to bridge the gap between proof-of-concept experiments and later large-scale development and trials.

Dr. Rider even ran a crowdfunding campaign to get the research restarted in 2016, and failed to hit the funding goal of $100,000^[4]https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/draco-may-be-a-cure-for-all-viral-infections-science-health/.

Dr. Rider has not given up hope. His RIDER Institute is still actively seeking donations^[5]https://riderinstitute.org/donate/ to bypass the Valley of Death and make DRACO available to the public.