How to make drugs for viruses that don’t yet exist

The SARS-CoV-2 virus took the world by surprise, but to some extent it has arrived just in time. The first SARS virus was discovered in 2003; the associated MERS virus hit in 2012. Today we have COVID-19. In other words, new coronaviruses appear doing successful jumps to humans very roughly once a decade – and there’s no reason to think they’ll stop after this one.

Unfortunately for us, there has only been so much cumulative progress in the development of antivirals to fight coronaviruses. As closely related as the viruses of SARS, MERS and COVID-19, they are sufficiently distinct that researchers have not found a catch-all drug against the coronavirus. And sadly, the SARS and MERS epidemics simply weren’t catastrophic enough to motivate donors, governments, and drug companies to develop proactive antivirals before the next event.

“A non-virologist, if you remind them, will remember what happened,” virologist Nat Moorman says of the outbreaks of SARS and MERS. “But the answer you usually hear is ‘yes, but that wasn’t really a big deal’, not realizing how close we really were to this big deal. And so, you know, the public interest, and at some level the interest of the funders, fades over time.

Moorman and his colleagues at UNC-Chapel Hill are determined to maintain a high level of interest in antivirals regardless of how the pandemic progresses. They are attacking a line of research that could lead to much more “broader spectrum” antivirals: drugs that are effective against this coronavirus, but also the next to appear – and, possibly, any virus. The edge spoke to Moorman about their antiviral angle of attack, so watch the video above for more.