Butler Helps in Search for Treatment of Coronavirus

An assistant professor of biology at Butler University is conducting
research that could one day play a role in helping to find a treatment for
coronavirus.

Chris Stobart is a virologist who looks for new behaviors in viruses.
He’s currently focusing his research on a protease, an enzyme that cuts
larger viral proteins into smaller proteins.

“Without the protein, the virus is dead,” Stobart says. “What we’re doing is
trying to mutate parts of this enzyme to figure out what regions are
potential targets for the drug.”

Stobart and his research team are investigating the structure of the
protease in the mouse hepatitis virus. Stobart says the coronavirus that
affects mice is similar to those affecting humans.

“It contains all the same genes but not the same protein products that the
human coronaviruses do. So, we can use it as a safe model to test and
evaluate how the virus works,” explain Stobart.

Stobart says his work is to help biochemists or pharmacologists to
create medicines to fight the virus.

“We’re in the trenches here at Butler and the goal for us is to learn so
that the central biology that we need for others to develop drugs to go to
market,” said Stobart. ‘We’re giving them the information. Here’s the flag
that you need to put down for your next drug research to go after this
target.”

He started studying coronaviruses about a decade ago. This specific
research path started in 2018, but the emergence of the novel strain of the
Wuhan coronavirus (nCoV-2019) makes his work timely and relevant.

“It’s a terrible virus, and it’s killing people. But from a scientific
perspective, this is one of our best opportunities to learn about
coronaviruses by watching what it’s doing, and trying to understand how it
does this, how did it emerge,” said Stobart.

Stobart says there are seven know human coronaviruses, four of which
cause the common cold. But then there are three emerging pathogens, SARS
(Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome)
and now this novel coronavirus.

“The emergence of this coronavirus is the third now new coronavirus to have
jumped in the humans in the last 20 years. This virus has never infected
humans in the past. It’s new in humans altogether,” explained Stobart. “And
so, we’re learning about the virus just as much as the virus is learning
off. It’s learning how to infect us, it’s learning how to spread, learning
how to pass from human to human.”

Stobart says his team’s research could play a role in leading a
treatment for coronaviruses.

He hopes to finish his work this spring and publish during the summer.