Expert opinion: Treatment of SARS and MERS in outbreak settings has focused on therapeutics with general antiviral activity and good safety profiles rather than efficacy data provided by cellular, rodent, or nonhuman primate models of highly pathogenic coronavirus infection.
The emergence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) has led to a renewed interest in studying the role of accessory proteins in regulating coronavirus infections in the natural host.
One protein, the product of SARS-CoV ORF6, converted a sublethal infection to a uniformly lethal encephalitis and enhanced virus growth in tissue culture cells, indicating that SARS-CoV proteins function in the context of a heterologous coronavirus infection.
The ACE I/D polymorphism is not directly related to increased susceptibility to SARS-coronavirus infection and is not associated with poor outcomes after SARS-coronavirus infection.
Neutralizing antibody and protective immunity to SARScoronavirus infection of mice induced by a soluble recombinant polypeptide containing an N-terminal segment of the spike glycoprotein.