Rapid progress from Fast Grants

by  Tyler Cowen in

I was pleased to read this NYT reporting:

Yet another team has been trying to find drugs that work against coronavirus — and also to learn why they work.

The team, led by Nevan Krogan at the University of California, San Francisco, has focused on how the new coronavirus takes over our cells at the molecular level.

The researchers determined that the virus manipulates our cells by locking onto at least 332 of our own proteins. By manipulating those proteins, the virus gets our cells to make new viruses.

Dr. Krogan’s team found 69 drugs that target the same proteins in our cells the virus does. They published the list in a preprint last month, suggesting that some might prove effective against Covid-19…

It turned out that most of the 69 candidates did fail. But both in Paris and New York [where the drugs were shipped for testing], the researchers found that nine drugs drove the virus down.

“The things we’re finding are 10 to a hundred times more potent than remdesivir,” Dr. Krogan said. He and his colleagues published their findings Thursday in the journal Nature.

The Krogan team was an early recipient of Fast Grants, and you will find more detail about their work at the above NYT link.  Fast Grants is also supporting Patrick Hsu and his team at UC Berkeley:

And the work of the Addgene team:

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