COVID-19 preclinical drug development database
Name: Maria McPhillips
Email Address: maria.mcphillips@glasgow.ac.uk
Phone Number:
Key Collaborators:
A bottleneck for developing new therapeutics is the need for in vitro studies with fully infectious SARS-CoV-2 in competent human cells. These assays require molecular virology expertise combined with the necessary BSL3 biocontainment facilities. Linking drug screening pipelines with the capacity to identify possible in vitro resistance variants would also facilitate the prediction of drug-resistant strains that could circulate (or are already circulating) in vivo. The MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR) has established “CRUSH” (COVID-19 Drug-Screening and Resistance Hub) for the benefit of the UK academic and industrial community. CRUSH is a facility fully dedicated to screen anti-SARS-CoV2 drugs/ monoclonal antibodies and characterise the potential drug-resistant mutations induced by possible lead compounds. CRUSH will also monitor the presence of SARS-CoV-2 globally circulating strains with potential drug-resistant mutations and curate an open access database with this information. In addition, CRUSH is also developing small rodent pre-clinical models for SARS-CoV-2.