COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) is a persistent and aggressive pandemic, with over ~260 million cases to date and more than ~5 million deaths thus far globally. While vaccination can be effective not all patients are able to respond to vaccination (such as the elderly or immuno-compromised). Critically, asymptomatic patients who display no viral symptoms are capable of being highly contagious and represent a significant danger of spread of the virus. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new drugs, post-exposure prophylaxis drugs (PEPs), targeting COVID-19 at the either early or asymptomatic phase of the disease to combat the spread of the virus and the severity of the disease or at later stages to relieve disease severity. This is particularly important for those at most risk such as the health care works and the elderly within our community. Additionally, emergent strains with a variety of new mutations represent a challenging difficult for vaccine development.
Epigenetic Enzymes, Erasers and Writers, are moving toward the forefront of drug development for a plethora of diseases due to the plasticity and reversible nature of epi-therapeutics. Importantly, the combinatorial epigenetic codes or signatures laid down by these enzymes within the highly modifiable amino-terminal tails of histones eloquently regulates gene expression programs. Recent exciting findings show that these codes extend to non-histone proteins critical for protein stability of critical cellular factors.
My laboratory has been at the forefront of developing epi-based therapeutics. In this talk, I will present how we are harnessing this expertise to unravel the interplay between the epigenome and SARS-Cov-2 infection. Importantly, addressing potential novel opportunities for drug development for COVID-19.