Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry have joined forces with a research team at Stanford to aim a gene-targeting, antiviral agent called PAC-MAN against COVID-19.

Last year, Stanley Qi, an assistant professor in the departments of bioengineering, and chemical and systems biology at Stanford University and his team had begun working on a technique called PAC-MAN — or Prophylactic Antiviral CRISPR in human cells — that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR to fight influenza.

But that all changed in January, when news of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. Qi and his team were suddenly confronted with a mysterious new virus for which no one had a clear solution. «So we thought, ‘Why don’t we try using our PAC-MAN technology to fight it?’» said Qi.

Since late March, Qi and his team have been collaborating with a group led by Michael Connolly, a principal scientific engineering associate in the Biological Nanostructures Facility at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, to develop a system that delivers PAC-MAN into the cells of a patient.

Like all CRISPR systems, PAC-MAN is composed of an enzyme — in this case, the virus-killing enzyme Cas13 — and a strand of guide RNA, which commands Cas13 to destroy specific nucleotide sequences in the coronavirus’s genome. By scrambling the virus’s genetic code, PAC-MAN could neutralize the coronavirus and stop it from replicating inside cells.

It’s all in the delivery

Qi said that the key challenge to translating PAC-MAN from a molecular tool into an anti-COVID-19 therapy is finding an effective way to deliver it into lung cells. When SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, invades the lungs, the air sacs in an infected person can become inflamed and fill with fluid, hijacking a patient’s ability to breathe.

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Materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.