Grant: Operating Grant

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is the leading cause of hospitalisation of infants in North America. RSV causes respiratory infection of the lungs leading to flu like symptoms, severe cough and pneumonia. Despite the severity of this particular infection there is no vaccine available and the only medication against RSV is a very expensive drug called palivizumab, that can only be used to prevent infection. This means that when a patient is suffering from RSV infection there aren't any specific treatments available to treat the infection itself. In summary, we need to learn more about RSV infection so that we can develop new drugs to treat it. We are researching the steps that RSV takes to enter and infect lung cells. In order for infection to happen the virus must first cross the outer membrane that surrounds the cell, which is called virus entry. We are studying the entry stage of the virus replication cycle so that we can develop the basis of new drugs that block RSV infection from happening. The biggest hurdle with developing drugs against RSV entry into cells is that very little is known about this phase of the RSV life cycle. However, recently (2011) our group shed new light on RSV entry by discovering a cellular entry receptor for RSV. Virus receptors are molecules made by the cell that a virus binds to in order to enter the cell. The ultimate purpose of our studies is to understand the RSV-receptor interaction so that we can develop drugs that block this interaction. Drugs that bind to the virus-receptor binding site on the virus act as receptor decoys that effectively soak up the virus before it has a chance to infect a cell. In summary, we are discovering the cellular factors that RSV uses to infect cells as the basis of new drugs to block RSV infection