SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 – the virus, the disease and the solutions

Ultan Power is Professor of Molecular Virology in Queen’s University Belfast. He graduated from University College Cork with a PhD in Microbiology. After his postdoctoral training in the molecular virology of respiratory viruses in St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, he moved to the pharma sector in France where he was appointed Head of Virology in the Centre of Immunology Pierre Fabre, the biotech research arm of Institut de Recherche Pierre Fabre.

In 2004, he returned to academia and established a research group in Queen’s University Belfast aimed at understanding human respiratory virus/host interactions, with particular emphasis on RSV. His group established novel in vitro models of respiratory virus infection based on primary human airway epithelium differentiated in the lab to look and behave like human airway epithelium in vivo. In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020, his research has pivoted to understanding the pathophysiology of COVID-19 disease in human airway epithelium and the repurposing of known drugs as potential therapeutics to treat COVID-19.