Deciphering the RNA Biology of SARS-CoV-2

NIH Pandemic-Era Grants

Pandemic Era Grants

2021

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Principal Investigator: Stefan  Muljo
Organization: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Fiscal Year: 2021
Award: $2,898
Funding agency: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

We are taking an RNA-centric approach that aims to develop an RNA-based anti-COVID-19 drug. If we can successfully identify one or multiple miRNAs essential for viral life cycle, then these represent promising anti-viral targets, and could be immediately inhibited using therapeutic anti-sense technology (eg. "antagomirs"). This line of research is urgently needed to provide a fresh angle of attack. If successful and miRNAs turn out to be key to the viral life cycle in vivo, it could provide us with another weapon to fight the COVID-19 pandemic or the next coronavirus. 

We are collaborating with NIAID's SARS-CoV-2 virology core (SVC) who will perform viral infections in human cell lines in their BSL-3 facility. We have made a detailed experiment plan and will begin work as soon as we have obtained all necessary approvals. While not the primary goal of our project, the viral miRNAs could also be used for diagnosis. In the future, in addition to the proposed cell culture experiments, we anticipate collaborating with Dr. Katrin Mayer-Barber (NIAID) to test the in vivo importance of specific miRNAs in mouse models of SARS-CoV-2 infection (eg. K18-hACE2 transgenic mouse).

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