Georgia State develops oral antiviral candidate for measles and croup

An oral antiviral candidate from Georgia State University could eventually give doctors a new tool against measles, croup and other orthoparamyxovirus infections at a moment when U.S. measles outbreaks are again straining public health response. The compound, GHP-88310, is still in preclinical development, but researchers said it was the most promising inhibitor they had found in years of work on this virus family.

The study, published May 22 in Science Advances, began with high-throughput screening and then moved through optimization, animal testing and human airway organoid cultures. Georgia State said the candidate was effective when taken once daily by mouth and was well tolerated in rodents, ferrets and dogs even at higher concentrations, an early safety signal that could support further development. The work focused first on parainfluenza virus type 3, a cause of bronchitis and pneumonia in infants for which there are no vaccines or therapies, before expanding to a broader group of related viruses that includes human parainfluenza viruses, measles virus and emerging henipaviruses.

The public-health need is clear. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that as of May 21, 2026, the United States had reported 1,952 confirmed measles cases, 93 percent of them outbreak-associated, across 29 outbreaks. The agency also said human parainfluenza viruses can cause croup in children, that HPIV-3 is more often linked to bronchiolitis and pneumonia, and that there is no specific antiviral treatment for HPIV illness. Georgia State said roughly 3 million U.S. cases a year may require treatment for parainfluenzavirus pneumonia, including serious illness in older adults, immunocompromised people and adult hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients.

That makes the pipeline matters as much as the promise. GHP-88310 is not approved and has not been tested as a treatment in people, so vaccination remains the primary defense against measles, while care for croup and many parainfluenza infections still relies largely on symptom management. But the candidate’s high barrier to viral escape and once-daily oral dosing could matter in an outbreak, especially for children, transplant patients and others who cannot count on the same protection as healthy, vaccinated people. In a year when measles has already returned to national data, the Georgia State work points to a practical gap in preparedness: a virus can spread fast, and medicine for the people left vulnerable still has to catch up.