The Host Response team at CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP), together with the Phenomics Australia node, the Victorian Centre for Functional Genomics (VCFG), at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, have co-published a study that advances the search for therapeutic targets against SARS-CoV-2 and sheds light on host factors driving COVID-19 pathogenesis.
The Host Response team at CSIRO ACDP has been a long-standing collaborator of the VCFG, performing one of the earliest whole genome RNAi screens back in 2011-2012. This work added an extra layer of complexity when the assay was conducted at bio-safety level 4 (BSL-4) using the highly pathogenic Hendra virus (HeV) (PMIDs 27010548, 27783670).
Fast forward several years to the pandemic era, and the CSIRO team utilised their expertise in targeting host-encoded miRNAs to develop a screening assay to measure SARS-CoV-2 expression in cells post-knockdown of the entire miRNA genome. With the goal of identifying miRNAs that promote and inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication, which may be used to explore therapeutic targets and determinants of COVID-19 pathogenesis. This work was supported by a Pipeline Accelerator Voucher in collaboration with the VCFG.
Once again, the transfection and cell biology steps were performed at VCFG before driving the plates back to Geelong for SARS-CoV-2 infection under BSL-44 conditions. Infected cells were fixed and stained, and then imaged using one of the VCFG’s high-content microscopes.
Following FAIR data principles, the methodology and discussion on the hits, coupled with the entire screen dataset, have been published and uploaded as a resource through Scientific DATA.
