Meet The Microbiologist - The Scientists Behind The Microbiology

Are there drugs that can treat coronaviruses? Timothy Sheahan talks about his drug discovery work on a compound that can inhibit all coronaviruses tested so far, and tells how his career path  took him to pharmaceutical antiviral research and then back to academia. Julie’s Biggest Takeaways: Even though the MERS-CoV was discovered as a human pathogen in 2012, it was likely percolating as a disease agent for a long time before that. Banked camel serum provides evidence that the virus had been circulating in camels for several decades prior. Differentiated ex vivo lung cultures allow study of virus infection in a 3D model representation for studying viral infection, including target cell types of both MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. SARS-CoV prefers ciliated epithelial cells Ace2 MERS-CoV prefers nonciliated epithelial cells DPP4 Coronavirus disease in people takes place over a course of about 2 weeks. In mice, the disease is similar, but progression is faster, taking about 1 week.  The drug remdesivir (RDV) is a nucl