Researchers are ramping up production of a promising drug that has proven effective in obliterating SARS-CoV in cellular cultures. The team hopes that the drug might also be effective in the fight against SARS’s close genetic cousin, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Northwestern University says that the team, led by Northwestern University and ShanghaiTech University, has produced the promising molecule, called valinomycin, in a cell-free system. With this approach, they increased production yields more than 5,000 times in just a few rapid design cycles, achieving higher concentrations of the molecule than achieved previously in cells.The research was published online recently in the journal Metabolic Engineering and will appear in the July 2020 print issue.