May 5, 2003 New Orleans -- Dr. William Gallaher, Professor of
Microbiology, Immunology, and Parasitology at Louisiana State
University (LSU) Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, with
collaboration from Dr. Robert Garry, Professor of Microbiology
and Immunology at Tulane University Health Sciences Center, has
developed a model of a critical surface protein of the virus
that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that could
pave the way for new effective antiviral drugs to treat it. Dr.
Gallaher, who previously discovered how both the Ebola (1996)
and Human Immunodeficiency Viruses (1988) invade cells, and Dr.
Garry have arranged for the model to be posted on the website,
All of Virology on the WWW, www.virology.net so that scientists
around the world working on SARS will have immediate and full
access to it. As a result of worldwide collaboration among
hospitals, laboratories, universities and public health
officials, the causative agent of SARS has been recently
identified as a new strain of human