A $1.5 million grant awarded to UT molecular biology professor Robert Krug and a Rice University assistant professor will allow the duo to create a more effective antiviral drug for strains of influenza A, which include H1N1 and bird flu.
Krug and Jane Tao, assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice University, received the grant from the National Health Institute to collaborate on a four-year research program studying the strains.
The research program plans to investigate a nuclear protein’s role in building an RNA package, which is critical for the virus to reproduce.
Krug said the NS1 protein, otherwise known as the nuclear protein, can counter antiviral flu responses to the human body.
“When a virus infects the cell, a host responds and has antiviral responses,“ Krug said. “NS1 counters [the antiviral responses]. If you can stop NS1 protein from countering, the virus removes itself.”
Krug said it is only a matter of time before the current drugs prescribed for the flu will no longer be resistant to the strain of influenza A.
“Right now, there’s only Tamiflu and Relenta, which are directed against the [one strain of the flu],” Krug said. “And there’s already some resistance to one of them. It’s just a matter of time as far as lots of mutants. You can’t just rely on a single pass of drugs.”
Tao said her research group will acquire the three-dimensional structure of the nuclear protein and plans to discover the packaging arrangements of the eight genes that allow the flu to replicate.
“The nuclear protein is very important and places several crucial roles in doing the viral replication process. We want to understand how the detailed mechanism carries out its different functions,” Tao said. “With that, [Tao’s research group] can come up with better ideas about how to inhibit activities for new leads for a new antivirus.”
Tao and Krug have collaborated for several years, said Jade Boyd, a spokeswoman for Rice University.
“She’s a structural biologist. She does a lot of work to actually find out what the structures of proteins are, and I know his specialty is somewhat different,” Boyd said. “The kind of the research they do in the lab complements each other very well.”
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