UCSF researchers are partnering with peers around the world to study how the novel coronavirus infects and takes over healthy cells, in order to interrupt the infection and transmission processes with drugs.

Join us for a lay-friendly Q&A on Reddit's r/Science forum, featuring: 

Nevan Krogan, PhD: Professor and the director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) at UCSF and a Senior Investigator at the Gladstone Institutes. He led the work to create the SARS-CoV-2 interactome and assembled the QBI Coronavirus Research Group (QCRG), which includes hundreds of scientists from around the world. His research focuses on developing and using unbiased, quantitative systems approaches to study a wide variety of diseases with the ultimate goal of developing new therapeutics. 

Kevan Shokat, PhD: A UCSF professor of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and an expert in drug design. In his role on the QCRG, his lab at UCSF is combing through existing FDA-approved drugs and clinical trial databases to find candidates that match up well with the human host proteins shown to interact with SARS-CoV-2, and may therefore block the actions of the virus.

John Young, PhD: A virologist by training and the Global Head of Infectious Diseases at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development in Basel, Switzerland. He oversees infectious disease research and early clinical development programs. He's collaborating with Krogan’s team to characterize the interactions between the virus and cellular proteins with the goal of identifying new therapeutic approaches.