Potential new treatment for COVID-19 identified

Researchers have recognized a possible new remedy that suppresses the replication of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. So as to multiply, all viruses, together with coronaviruses, infect cells and reprogram them to provide novel viruses. The analysis revealed that cells contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 can solely produce novel coronaviruses when their metabolic pentose phosphate pathway is activated.

With the applying of the drug benfooxythiamine, an inhibitor of this pathway, SARS-CoV-2 replication was suppressed and contaminated cells didn’t produce coronaviruses.

The analysis from the College of Kent’s College of Biosciences and the Institute of Medical Virology at Goethe-College, Frankfurt am Primary, discovered the drug additionally elevated the antiviral exercise of ‘2-deoxy-D-glucose’; a drug which modifies the host cell’s metabolism to cut back virus multiplication.

This exhibits that pentose phosphate pathway inhibitors like benfooxythiamine are a possible new remedy possibility for COVID-19, each on their very own and together with different therapies.

Moreover, benfooxythiamin’s antiviral mechanism differs from that of different COVID-19 medication akin to remdesivir and molnupiravir. Subsequently, viruses resistant to those could also be delicate to benfooxythiamin.

Professor Martin Michaelis, College of Kent, stated, “This can be a breakthrough within the analysis of COVID-19 remedy. Since resistance improvement is an enormous downside within the remedy of viral ailments, having therapies that use totally different targets is essential and supplies additional hope for growing the best therapies for COVID-19.”

Professor Jindrich Cinatl, Goethe-College Frankfurt, stated, “Focusing on virus-induced adjustments within the host cell metabolism is a sexy solution to intervene particularly with the virus replication course of.”