PhD defence Y. (Yining) Wang

Brief summary of the doctoral thesis:

Coronaviruses (CoVs) comprise a large family of zoonotic RNA viruses and humans are constantly threatened by emerging and remerging coronavirus epidemics in the recent decades. In contrast to the three highly pathogenic coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2), four endemic seasonal coronaviruses (NL63, 229E, OC43 and HKU1) have been largely neglected. Nevertheless, seasonal coronaviruses widely circulate in the global population which annually contribute to nearly 5% of the billions of upper respiratory infections(71). Severe infections with seasonal or highly pathogenic coronaviruses are commonly accompanied with hyperinflammation driving morbidity and mortality (72). To tackle the currently circulating and future emerging new coronaviruses, I envision the necessity of developing therapeutics with pancoronavirus activity. In this thesis, I embarked on a series of studies to develop anti-coronavirus therapies of broad-spectrum activity via inhibiting viral replication and coronavirus-triggered inflammasome activation.