Pittsburgh has had a person hit by a bus, school locked down for a gun, & a car hitting a building all in the past 6 or 7 hours.
March 20, 2020
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – The University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Vaccine Research has been on the cutting edge of work being done with coronavirus.
Important progress is being made in our backyard.
Dr. Paul Duprex, Ph.D. is the Director of the CVR at Pitt. He explains why this work is critical in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.
“We don’t have very many anti-viral drugs compared to the number of drugs we have for bacteria,” explains Duprex, a native of Northern Ireland.
“Remember, bacteria and viruses are very different. So antibiotics, people often think antibiotics will work on viruses, and they don’t.”
That is why the work being done inside these Biocontainment Labs at the University of Pittsburgh is critical.
These scientists received a small sample of the virus from the Centers for Disease control last month. They successfully grew and rapidly multiplied the number of virus particles. Those samples were used by clinicians to develop tests for coronavirus and to help researchers work on stopping the spread.
Duprex explains how the virus spreads inside the body: “The virus has proteins on the outside, and it attaches to the cell. That allows the virus to bind to the surface of the cell and liberate the contents, the genetic contents, which are inside the virus inside the cell.”
https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/03/20/university-of-pittsburgh-center-for-vaccine-research-coronavirus-progress/