The Robert Damoiseaux laboratory in the UCLA Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology is interested in developing high throughput screening technologies. As the director of the Molecular Screening Shared Resource (MSSR), Dr. Damoiseaux is able to screen > 100,000 compounds on a system of interest per day using automated equipment and data collection. Collaborating scientists have access to various libraries covering FDA approved drugs for re-purposing, chemical genomics libraries for dissecting biological pathways, and various larger libraries for drug discovery. COVID-19 is a highly contagious coronavirus disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, that is characterized by fever, coughing, and respiratory distress. Much of the scientific community is currently focused on elucidating SARS-CoV-2 viral pathology and identifying novel therapeutic targets to prevent viral entry and replication within mammalian cell hosts.
Damoiseaux and colleagues have access to several COVID-19 reagents through the MSSR, including siRNA, shRNA, CRISPR sgRNA, and cDNA, that may be beneficial for understanding this virus. Dr. Damoiseaux is collaborating with the Arumugaswami laboratory from the UCLA Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, to screen compounds in a high throughput format as potential COVID-19 drugs in SARS-CoV-2 infected cells. Identification or generation of small molecule drugs that are effective therapeutics for COVID-19 will produce a major breakthrough during this global pandemic.
Link to Faculty Webpage: https://faculty.pharmacology.ucla.edu/institution/personnel?personnel_id=436982