The Buck Institute for Research on Aging has joined the effort to find a drug that will be effective in treating people who contract COVID-19.

The Novato institute is collaborating with researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. Nevan Krogan, a biologist at UCSF and an adjunct professor at the Buck Institute, led a study that in just two months identified the 332 human proteins that the coronavirus uses to multiply in the human body.

Researchers will use this information in a bid to develop an effective antiviral drug that can be used to treat coronavirus patients.

“We hope that the Buck is going to be playing a significant role,” said Buck Institute CEO Eric Verdin. “This is the biggest challenge of our time in terms of public health especially regarding the elderly.”

As has been widely reported, the likelihood of dying for coronavirus patients increases with age.

“We are in the process at the Buck of starting a new program focused on understanding why that is the case,” Verdin said.

Verdin said scientists know that immune response decreases with age. People who are older tend to produce fewer interferons, a group of signaling proteins that are generated and released by cells in response to the presence of viruses. This in turn causes adjacent cells to ramp up their antiviral defenses.

Verdin said older people are also more likely to experience a dangerous immune system overreaction known as a cytokine storm, when their body finally recognizes the presence of the coronavirus. The overproduction of cytokines can cause severe inflammation, high fever and organ failure. The No. 1 cause of death due to coronavirus is respiratory failure but the No. 2 cause is believed to be cytokine storms.

Verdin said what seems to be happening in older people is their bodies are taking too long to recognize the virus and then overreacting.

“This is a hypothesis we’re going to be testing,” he said.

Verdin said that while the strength of immune systems decreases with age, people who exercise, eat a healthy diet and live a healthy lifestyle are likely to maintain a strong immune system longer.

“If you have an 80-year-old who is still riding his bike up Mount Tamalpais, I would predict that person is still protected by being in really good health,” Verdin said.

That protection, however, is not absolute. Some young, healthy people have also died after becoming infected with the coronavirus.

“We believe that the way people handle the virus in terms of their immune response is determined by a number of factors that we don’t fully understand,” Verdin said. “I suspect there are going to be individual variations simply based on your genetic makeup.”

Viruses reproduce in the body by inserting their genes into human cells and hijacking those cells’ own genetic machinery to produce viral proteins. For this process to work, those viral proteins must be able to harness certain necessary human proteins.

Krogan’s study, published on the website bioRxiv.org, examined 26 of the coronavirus’ 29 genes and identified 332 human proteins targeted by COVID-19. The study also identified a host of drugs already approved by the Food and Drug Administration for other purposes that interact with these same human proteins.

Some of these compounds have been sent to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and the Pasteur Institute in Paris for testing against live coronavirus grown in laboratories.

“The expertise that my lab brings is the study of the metabolism,” Verdin said. “We will be looking at all of the targets that they have identified and trying to see if there is anything we know from metabolic studies and immune studies that could be relevant to identifying new drugs that could be used against the virus.”

One of the drugs identified in Krogan’s study, chloroquine, a malaria drug, gained instant fame when President Trump spoke enthusiastically about its potential at a recent White House press briefing. The World Health Organization has announced it will begin a trial on chloroquine along with other drugs.

Earlier this month, an Arizona man died and his wife was hospitalized after they ingested a fish tank additive that contains the same active ingredient as the anti-malaria drug. And the American Medical Association and American Pharmacists Association have issued a joint statement condemning the inappropriate ordering, prescribing or dispensing of medications to treat COVID-19.

Verdin is hopeful that an effective antiviral drug will be identified before a vaccine for COVID-19 is perfected. He cautioned, however, that many drugs that look promising when tested in the laboratory fail to pan out in human trials.

Regarding chloroquine, he said, “It’s one of the leads, but I don’t know how many leads we’re going to have to follow to find the right one.”

In the meantime, the Buck Institute is contributing in every way it can. On March 23, it donated 5,400 sterile vials, one of the scarce components needed for coronavirus testing, to Marin County.