artist's rendering of COVID-19

Researchers publish article on method to control COVID-19

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.

Read their work.