{"id":161704,"date":"2020-06-10T07:06:42","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T11:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=161704"},"modified":"2020-06-09T15:08:08","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T19:08:08","slug":"uconn-researcher-hopes-stop-covid-19-tracks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/06\/uconn-researcher-hopes-stop-covid-19-tracks\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Researcher Hopes to Stop COVID-19 in Its Tracks"},"content":{"rendered":"

If virus infections were like subway rides, antiviral drugs would be like blocks on the tracks: shut down enough stations, and the virus can\u2019t go anywhere. Finding those weak spots in the coronavirus infection that causes COVID-19 is the goal of Ranjan Srivastava\u2019s newest project.<\/p>\n

Srivastava, the department head of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UConn, has experience mathematically modeling how the Hepatitis B virus spreads and causes liver cancer. He suspected the same kind of analysis might be useful at finding weak points in the novel coronavirus SARS-COV-2 that causes COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Instead of modeling how the coronavirus spreads from person to person, or the hook it uses to pry open and infect cells, Srivastava takes a broader approach: he uses the probabilistic mathematical tools used to study potential chemical reaction sequences. Each stop on the subway ride of infection has a certain probability of occurring. Will a virus particle find a cell to infect? Will it be able to pass through the cell wall? Once inside, will it find the cell nucleus? And if it finds the nucleus, will it be able to reproduce itself? Each of these steps involves chemical reactions that might or might not actually happen. Srivastava\u2019s models strive to figure out how to make them less likely to occur, and then to figure out if the virus might have alternative ways to cause infection and illness. If there is an alternative\u2014a different route through the subway system\u2014are there good ways to block that route as well?<\/p>\n

\"A
Department head for Chemical and Biomolecular EngineeringRanjan Srivastava. (Peter Morenus\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By taking a wide, systems approach, Srivastava says the results will be significantly more helpful as we race towards identifying antivirals and creating vaccines.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have developed an approach that directly links what is happening within cells to how infected cells, uninfected cells, and viral particles interact in a person resulting in much more accurate models,\u201d he says. Coupling what’s happening inside the cell with what\u2019s happening outside the cell could reveal new approaches to derail infections.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still early days in this research. Right now Srivastava\u2019s lab is still building the coronavirus\u2019s subway network. Getting enough data is hard. For example, virologists don\u2019t even agree on how the novel coronavirus actually gets inside a cell. There are two major possibilities, and Srivastava\u2019s models have to account for both. In some cases, his models rely on research done on SARS and other better known coronaviruses. He\u2019s constantly scanning the literature for more specific information on SARS-COV-2.<\/p>\n

The research, which is being done through a one-year, $130,000 National Science Foundation Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant, will be carried out by Srivastava and his team through coding and running simulations. All of their work will be publicly available for any researcher to use.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the reason I became an engineer and a teacher was to give back to society,\u201d he says. \u201cBeing able to be part of this battle and to hopefully make some positive contribution for humanity is truly an honor and a privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the final product is about a year away, Srivastava expects to have some crude simulations much sooner, allowing drug researchers to simulate different combinations of solutions against the virus. Perhaps one antiviral drug shuts down one pathway, and another drug will shut down the remaining pathways. Or at least slow the virus down, giving the body more time to fight it off and prevent both the virus and the victim from reaching their final destination. Srivastava\u2019s model hopes to be able to point researchers working on vaccines and treatments in the right direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe model is an approximation. It tells us what is promising, what will most likely not work, and it should tell us where the potentially high-payoff experiments are,\u201d Srivastava says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eli Freund in the School of Engineering contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A UConn researcher is investigating a way to stop the COVID-19 virus from spreading through the body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":161705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866,2213,2076,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1899],"class_list":["post-161704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","category-coronavirus","category-research","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 07:16:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161706,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161704\/revisions\/161706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/161705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161704"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=161704"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=161704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}