The Ren Sun laboratory in the UCLA Department of Molecular & Medical Pharmacology is interested in characterizing virus replication capacity, in the presence of specific immune response, drug selection, and host-viral interactions. COVID-19 is a novel highly contagious coronavirus disease causing fever, coughing, and shortness of breath in severe cases. There are no current strategies to treat or prevent the spread of COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Existing RT-PCR COVID-19 diagnostic strategies lack sensitivity, are not highly scalable, and do not provide quick detection. During their study of influenza viruses, the Sun lab has previously identified novel capacities of viruses to evade the host innate immune response. Eliminating this evasion function in live attenuated influenza vaccines (LAIVs) improves the innate and adaptive immune responses, causing higher degrees of vaccine protection against viruses. These improvements to viral vaccines, which attenuate the virus and promote immune response concurrently, are largely applicable to COVID-19 vaccine development.
More concretely, researchers in the Sun lab have also developed high affinity binding affibodies (antibody mimetics) to the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein. These affibodies are the source for a novel ELISA-based diagnostic platform that is greatly improved over existing viral diagnostic techniques. Additionally, Dr. Sun is generating affibody-coated test strips for saliva detection of COVID-19 in high population settings or at home testing. The diagnostic tests satisfy a large unmet need for rapid COVID-19 detection that will assist in the slow of viral spread.
Link to Faculty website: https://faculty.pharmacology.ucla.edu/institution/personnel?personnel_id=45881
Link to relevant cases:
1) 2020-757 https://ucla.technologypublisher.com/technology/39050
2) 2017-515 https://techtransfer.universityofcalifornia.edu/NCD/29263.html
3) Genome-wide identification of interferon-sensitive mutations enables influenza vaccine design. Science (2019).