After 150,000 articles and 17 million genome sequences, what has science taught us about SARS-CoV-2? Kei Sato was looking for his next big challenge five years ago when it smacked him — and the world — in the face. The virologist had recently started an independent group at the University of Tokyo and was trying to carve out a niche in the crowded field of HIV research. “I thought, ‘What can I do for the next 20 or 30 years?’”
He found an answer in SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, that was rapidly spreading around the world. In March 2020, as rumours swirled that Tokyo might face a lockdown that would stop research activities, Sato and five students decamped to a former adviser’s laboratory in Kyoto. There, they began studying a viral protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to quell the body’s earliest immune responses. Sato soon established a consortium of researchers that would go on to publish at least 50 studies on the virus.