v25i2

Treatments and Targets HKUMed has been exploring a range of molecular pathways for treatments and potential vaccines, as well as developing effective means to develop and test them. It also has a vaccine under trial. Lab-based tools and insights » An important early need was to find animal models that were suitable for COVID-19 research. HKUMed scholars developed a golden Syrian hamster model in which SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission resembles that found in humans and which is more physiological than transgenic mice models and more accessible than macaque models. This has enabled researchers to explore a number of treatment and vaccine options. For instance, one study found that when plasma from recovered hamsters was injected into infected hamsters, it reduced their lung viral load by 10 times. » Researchers also used a human lung explant model to demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 virus has low induction of interferons with higher transmissibility than SARS-CoV, and presented with milder symptoms. » SARS-CoV-2 virus tropism, replication kinetics and cell damage were also studied Two major targets of the SARS-CoV-2 humoral immune response, ORF8 and ORF3b, were discovered and can be used for more specific testing of COVID-19 infection. 18