Following its launch at the end of March, members of the PRiME COVID-19 Task Force on Advanced Diagnostics and New Therapeutics have been actively working on projects for novel diagnostics and therapeutics to help combat the pandemic here in Canada. While we couldn’t provide an in-person forum to hear about the progress being made, we decided to do so online with a virtual mini-symposium for the PRiME community on May 12th.
The symposium featured 10 faculty members from PRiME who presented brief highlights of their projects that were recently awarded funding from the Toronto COVID-19 Action Initiative. These included platform resources like the Chemistry COVID-19 Core Facility (CCCF), led by Rob Batey, which leverages expertise in UofT’s Faculty of Arts & Science to provide support for the small scale synthesis of small molecules for testing as therapeutics, the design and generation of chemical analogs of molecules identified through screening and other approaches, and synthesis of reagents that are needed for community efforts where commercial supplies may be lacking. Similarly, the UofT centres, BioZone and the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), received TCAI funding to apply their expertise to provide high purity SARS-CoV-2 proteins through the Toronto Open Access COVID-19 Protein Manufacturing Centre, led by Al Edwards. Of the 25 proteins encoded by the SARS-CoV-2 genome, the group will have more than half available for Canadian researchers before the end of the month. Additionally, they will be working on solving the structures for those proteins where the structure is unsolved and they will be making these publicly available.
Increased diagnostic testing is of primary importance, and many of the Task Force members received funding for projects to identify novel diagnostic tools. PRiME’s Director, Shana Kelley, is developing a point of care diagnostic capable of directly detecting viral particle or viral proteins in the saliva, eliminating the need for nasopharyngeal swabs and RNA extraction. In the Faculty of Engineering, Leo Chou is using structural nucleic-acid nanotechnology to create a one-pot, enzyme-free detection assay and Xinyu Liu is designing a paper-based microfluidic biosensor with a colorimetric signal readout. The handheld, automated design would eliminate the need for expensive equipment and cut down the exposure of those conducting the tests. Keith Pardee and his team in Pharmacy are developing a portable, affordable diagnostic based on technology previously used successfully for detection of other viral diseases, including Zika.
In the Faculty of Medicine, efforts from PRiME researchers include both novel diagnostic and therapeutic development. Igor Stagljar is focusing on a novel serological assay for the detection of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies based on protein-protein interactions in living cells. This method would allow very small sample volumes to be tested in high-throughput with a turnaround time of roughly 1 hour. Alan Cochrane and Walid Houry are both screening existing small molecules to identify inhibitors targeting RNA processing mechanisms or molecular chaperones critical to viral biogenesis. Jason Moffat is leading a team of researchers within UofT and at collaborating institutions to identify essential host dependency factors for COVID-19 infection and replication suing CRISPR screens. The information obtain through this work would accelerate drug repurposing efforts.
As the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve around us, it was encouraging to hear about the exciting progress being made by our local researchers. In an effort to get the Toronto-based community interested in COVID-19 life sciences research together on a regular basis to share progress and identify common resources, PRiME is organizing monthly mini-symposia. We look forward to next month.