The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 4 million deaths and effective methods to control CoV-2 infection, in addition to vaccines, are needed. A team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University designed a trimeric version of the receptor-binding domain (tRBD) of the Cov-2 virus and show that tRBD is a potent inhibitor of CoV-2 through both competitive binding to the ACE2 and steric hindrance, and has the potential to emerge as a first-line therapeutic method to control COVID-19.
Their work was published in iScience.
The research team consisted of:
- Shrikanth C. Basavarajappa, a postdoc;
- Angela Rose Liu, a graduate student;
- Anna Bruchez, instructor;
- Zhenlu Li, a postdoc;
- Vinicius G. Suzart, a graduate student;
- Zhonghua Liu, an instructor;
- Yinghua Chen, PEPCC facility manager;
- Tsan Sam Xiao, an associate professor;
- Matthias Buck, a professor; and
- Parameswaran Ramakrishnan, an associate professor.