Dr. Sheahan is an NIH funded virologist working at the host pathogen interface to develop new methods of viral control. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from the University of New Hampshire in 1999, he moved to Boston to try to make a career in punk rock music but soon realized that he enjoyed pipetting more than playing guitar. In 2003, he began his graduate training at UNC Chapel Hill with Dr. Ralph Baric focusing coronavirus (CoV) spillover and the design broadly acting vaccines and therapies. After postdoctoral studies on hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the laboratory of 2020 Nobel Laureate Dr. Charles M. Rice at the Rockefeller University, he became an Investigator at GlaxoSmithKline working to develop host targeting antivirals to treat acute respiratory infections. Tim became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in 2015. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sheahan and colleagues generated preclinical proof-of-principle data that remdesivir and molnupiravir were broadly active against the CoV family suggesting these antivirals could be employed to treat future emerging CoV. This work helped accelerate the clinical testing of these antivirals in early 2020. Sheahan is currently working to develop broad-spectrum inhibitors of emerging CoV and is also developing mouse models of chronic hepacivirus infection within which to study the effect of antiviral therapy on the development of liver disease and cancer. Sheahan has been active in communicating the importance of antivirals during the pandemic on television and print media including a feature in GQ Magazine. Three new human CoV have emerged in the past 20 years. Thus, for READDI-AC, Dr. Sheahan is leading efforts to develop novel inhibitors of the CoV replicase and helicase.
