The close relation between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), unpaired adaptive immune responses and overexpression of inflammatory cytokines has been described more than a decade ago (1, 2).
More recently, the notion of “cytokine storm” or “cytokine release syndrome” has been used by Life Scientists when they have monitored the expression level dynamics of cytokines in the sera of COVID-19 patients with acute lung damages and respiratory distress. (3)

With the now global outbreak of the novel SARS-like coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (2019-nCoV, COVID-19 virus), access to research tools has become critical to better understand the pathophysiology of the disease and develop specific and efficient novel therapeutics and prevention methods. Scientists identified the novel coronavirus as a group 2B CoV, distinct from the SARS-CoV. Genome sequencing indicated that SARS-CoV-2 (2019-nCoV) shares 79.5% sequence identity with SARS-CoV. It is therefore essential to assess SARS-CoV-2 specificity of research reagents. RayBiotech, distributed by tebu-bio in Europe, has made very special efforts to allow fast release of SARS-CoV-2 validated tools. This post introduces this new range of detection reagents, proteins and antibodies now available to boost COVID-19 research in Europe.

Many initiatives led by worldwide scientific networks are currently being launched to decipher cellular mechanisms involved in SARS-CoV-2 cellular entry. For example, a recent study has identified 332 high confidence SARS-CoV-2-human protein-protein interactions (Gordon D.E. at al. “A SARS-CoV-2-Human Protein-Protein Interaction Map Reveals Drug Targets and Potential Drug-Repurposing” (March 2020) bioRxiv). All these efforts are aimed at rapidly discovering antiviral drugs with proven efficacy, and at developing vaccines to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks. This crisis also enables pharma & biotech companies to reposition their existing antiviral drugs (Harrison C. “Coronavirus puts drug repurposing on the fast track” (Feb. 2020), Nature). In this post, we’ll introduce new, recently released in vitro assays and SARS-CoV related chemical compounds and compound libraries to support COVID-19 early phase drug discovery projects.

The cGAS-cGAMP-STING cell signalling pathway plays a critical role in antiviral and antitumor immunity as well as mediating autoimmune responses. Dysregulation or aberrant activation of the pathway by self-DNA has emerged as an underlying cause of tumorigenesis and autoimmune disorders. As the critical role of cyclic dinucleotides in pathophysiology continues to emerge, new tools to study these signaling pathways are being developed. This post introduces the latest ELISA released on the market.