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. In just five years, SARS-CoV-2 became one of the most closely examined viruses on the planet. Researchers have published about 150,000...
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