March 17, 2020
Dr. David Ho, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year 1996 for his AIDS research, creator of the HIV-1 vaccine, a graduate of Caltech, received MD from Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences of Technology, Professor of Medicine at Columbia University and science director of Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center has set his main attention to Covid-19 and other coronaviruses.
Dr. Ho’s research in HIV/AIDS will aid him tremendously because like HIV, coronavirus is an RNA virus. This means coronaviruses produces more of its genetic material after infecting host cells. Dr. Ho is, in fact, targeting two particular enzymes of the coronavirus: protease and polymerase. Coronavirus uses these two enzymes to replicate itself and make progeny viruses. The Taiwanese-American doctor has already developed HIV and Hepatitis-C (also an RNA virus) drugs that can target either one of these enzymes, which will interrupt virus replication (killing the virus).
Coronavirus research has been spearheaded by Alibaba founder Jack Ma with a $2.1 million grant to Columbia University with Dr. Ho being the head researcher.
Feature Image via Vision Learning & Time Magazine