What cells,
where has it been doing the most damage?
Cuz there's so many questions about why
does it kill some people so quickly and
others seem to just have mild symptoms?
>> What is known about this virus is that
it binds through what's called the ACE II
receptor, which is a receptor that,
it's like you can think about
it like a lock and key.
The virus is the key and
the receptor is the lock, and
if the key fits the lock,
the virus is able to enter the cell.
And then it's able to produce more copies
of itself and then expand and destroy
tissues in the body and to basically
cause havoc and wreak havoc in the body.
For instance, lung cells and your
respiratory tract express high levels of
ACE II, which is why this
virus really propagates and
builds up its numbers in the respiratory
tract of patients that get it.
Now as far as your question about why some
patients don't get it as bad as others,
there's lots of explanations for
that, but nobody knows for sure.
One explanation could be that there
are different levels of that receptor
on the lung cells of those
particular patients.
Maybe older patients,
who seem to be more susceptible,
have higher levels of expression
of that particular receptor.
But we don't know that right now,
but that's one possible explanation.
Another possible explanation is
that if they have a pre-condition,
such as they are smokers or they have
a heart disease or other components, that
affects your immune system which is how
your body fights off bacteria and viruses.
To the point where they're
somewhat depressed
in their level of being able to control
any viral or bacterial infection.
So this virus takes hold, and
then it's able to cause different levels
of infection in different people.
>> Do you think that people can
develop an immunity to this?
>> Immune responses is how your body
fights off a bacteria or a virus.
And the amount of immune
responses that you make or
I make would be different
depending on how we see the virus.
And it really depends on how
much the virus infects us.
For the most part with most viruses, if
a person becomes infected with that virus
and gets relatively sick or
very sick from that virus,
your immune response is very
stimulated to that particular virus.
And it makes a very strong immune response
which eventually clears that virus,
which means that person or people would
hopefully have long lasting immunity.
If they came into contact with that virus
again they would most likely see it,
recognize it, and
destroy it almost immediately.
The problem or there is a case where
people who are asymptomatic or
don't develop a huge immune response to
this virus, if they get the virus again
one would argue that they
fought it off the first time,
they should be able to fight it off again.
But what if they have something else
that has come into their system
in between that lowers
their immune status?
That's why developing vaccines where
you actually vaccinate someone to
allow them to see the virus in
a noninfectious state, maybe giving
multiple boosts of that vaccine, would
allow someone to be able to control that
virus when they saw it the next time
>> The main question for
a lot of people is, at what point will
it be safe to kind of get back into
whatever this new normal will be that can
they go back to their office buildings,
can they buy food from
a restaurant like they used to do?
>> Right, so as far as time frames, that's
a very difficult question to answer,
although I will try.
Scientists around the world,
including researchers at our institute,
are trying to develop the tests
that will allow us to determine,
is someone infected, is someone not
infected to a very sensitive degree.
And then if you've seen the virus we would
argue that you would have that response,
an antibody response, so therefore
you would be protected in the future.
As far as how long it's
gonna take to get there,
we will get to a phase hopefully by
this summer, maybe June or July.
I was telling my wife the other day that
I was hoping maybe on the Fourth of July,
I'll be able to have my father and
her parents over to our house for
a Fourth of July picnic cuz I'm hoping
that maybe we'll be in a situation
where we can start to relax some of those.
But we have to be really careful when we
do relax those restrictions, because we
don't want that virus to come back out and
actually be more of a problem later on.
>> So what would that treatment look like?
Would it look like a cough syrup?
Would it be a shot?
What is it they would see?
>> Ideally what we would hope for
in the long run is something
that is orally administered.
So you could literally just take a pill
once a day or once a week and it would
allow you to fight that virus off to allow
your immune system to come on strong.
In the meantime for
right now a lot of what is being looked at
is mostly through an IV administration.
Which, for people who are in
the hospitals, is really an option.
For people who are outside of the
hospital, it's obviously much harder and
they would obviously prefer
an oral administration.
>> And that's where that third line
of effort of testing the drugs like
the chloroquine?
>> Yes.
>> So are you guys actually actively
testing that drug right now?
>> So we are testing multiple
hundreds of drugs right now.
And that is one of the drugs we
are testing in our high throughput system.
We're testing derivatives of that
particular drug as well as that
drug itself.
>> Have you just in the controlled
environments been able to manipulate and
see what the virus likes or
doesn’t like, lives longer under
warmer temperatures in the lab?
>> Viruses have actually adapted
to survive at 98.6 degrees.
Do you want to take
a guess at what that is?
>> Because of us?
[LAUGH]
>> That’s exactly right.
Because we are their vehicle,
we are their means for production.
So if you lower that temperature or
increase that temperature,
the virus is less able to replicate.
So one thing people don't really
know is when you get a fever,
the fever is not necessarily
the virus itself causing your
your body temperature to rise, it's your
immune response creating a higher body
temperature because the virus doesn't
survive as well at that temperature.
>> How easy might a test to be for people?
>> The way I could
envision the testing for
antibodies is you would go into a CVS or
a drugstore, and they would actually take
a pinprick of blood just like you we're
doing a like an insulin test or something.
And basically they would take
that blood from a pinprick and
place it on a piece of paper.
And basically in five to ten
minutes you would be able to tell
whether your blood has the antibodies that
are specific for that particular virus.
>> Do you think that there's
any chance at all that
this was a man made virus that
was meant as a buyer weapon?
Or is this so closely related to
some of the other viruses this lab
has handled, that it's just
the latest iteration of this COVID?
>> So at this point in time I
don't know exactly whether,
I don't believe that this
was a man made virus.
There's been lots of events like this
throughout human history where viruses
have spilled over from an animal, where
it lives very well with that animal and
doesn't cause any sort of sickness or
illness.
And then it spills over to humans and
it causes sickness.
As we continue to industrialize different
parts of the world that are not
industrialized from before,
we're encroaching on new environments.
We're disrupting ecosystems that
we have never touched before, so
therefore that opportunity
becomes much greater.
So maybe the reason why we're seeing this
more often is because we now have moved
into areas we haven't seen before.
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