The double battle of cancer patients due to the Coronavirus
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The COVID-19 vaccine is getting closer
6 April 2020
"We are hopeful that our results will have implications for the development of a new drug to treat this unprecedented pandemic," explains the study leader.
An international team led by a researcher from the University of British Columbia (Canada) has found an experimental drug that effectively blocks the cellular gate that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes the Covid-19 disease, uses to infect its hosts. .
The findings, published in the journal 'Cell', are promising as a treatment capable of stopping infection in the early stages of the new coronavirus. "We are hopeful that our results will have implications for the development of a new drug for the treatment of this unprecedented pandemic," explains study leader Josef Penninger.
ACE2, a protein on the surface of the cell membrane, is now at the center of this outbreak as the key receptor for the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. In previous work, Penninger and other researchers first identified ACE2, and discovered that in living organisms, ACE2 is the key receptor for SARS, the viral respiratory disease recognized as a global threat in 2003. His laboratory also linked protein with both cardiovascular diseases and lung failure.
"Our new study provides much-needed direct proof that a drug, called APN01, which will soon be tested in clinical trials by the European biotechnology company Apeiron Biologics, is useful as an antiviral therapy for Covid-19," details another of the authors, Art Slutsky, professor at the University of Toronto (Canada).
In the cell cultures analyzed, the drug inhibited the load of coronavirus. In engineered replicas of human blood vessels and kidneys (organoids grown from human stem cells), the researchers showed that the virus can directly infect and replicate in these tissues. This provides important information about the development of the disease and the fact that severe cases of Covid-19 present multi-organ failure and evidence of cardiovascular damage. The drug also reduced SARS-CoV-2 infection in these engineered human tissues.
"The virus that causes Covid-19 is a close sibling of the first SARS virus. Our previous work has helped quickly identify ACE2 as the gateway for SARS-CoV-2, which explains a lot about the disease. "We now know that a soluble form of ACE2 that traps the virus could in fact be a therapy that specifically targets the door the virus must take to infect us. There is hope for this horrible pandemic," Penninger concludes.
