Drs. Bieniasz (Bieniasz lab) and Hatziioannou are developing anti-viral agents aimed at blocking a wide range of SARS-CoV-2 variants, other cornaviruses as well as diverse pandemic threat viruses by binding to the sites on human cells and tissues that are used by viruses to infect cells.
The biology and evolution of viruses and eukaryotes are closely linked. Bieniasz and Hatziioannou seek to define how host genes influence the replication of viruses, with an emphasis on human and primate immunodeficiency viruses. Their goal is to characterize the host functions that viruses mimic, manipulate, and otherwise exploit, as well as the defenses cells have evolved against viral infection.
