For the past three years, Corewell Health researchers have been studying the genetic code of the virus that causes COVID-19 to better understand how it is changing and how to avoid another pandemic. Much of the world's focus has been on the development of vaccines to prevent the spread of the virus; however, vaccines primarily target the portion of the virus that constantly changes, requiring vaccines to be regularly updated The new research, published in the journal Microorganisms, highlights that it is the unchanging parts of the virus that may provide reliable targets for new treatment strategies. The key findings of the study, which evaluated COVID-19 samples from western areas of Michigan, were: "Over the past few years, our study genotyped thousands of COVID-19 samples," said Adam Caulfield, Ph.
D., director of the microbiology lab at Corewell Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and co-principal investigator of the study. "In addition to detailing which parts of the virus are most susceptible to changes, it was amazing how closely the changes we were seeing in west Michigan correlated with what was happening elsewhere in the country.
Our findings showed the value of surveillance for public health initiatives, while identifying stable parts of the virus as potential candidates for small molecule drugs and other drug development." Small molecule drugs typically are the everyday drugs we take to cure headaches, allergies, and in the case of COVID-19, fight harmful viruses. "I.