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Common FDA-approved drug may effectively neutralize virus that causes COVID-19:

A common drug, already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), may also be a powerful tool in fighting COVID-19, according to research published this week in Antiviral Research.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, uses a surface spike protein to latch onto human cells and initiate infection. But heparin, a blood thinner also available in non-anticoagulant varieties, binds tightly with the surface spike protein, potentially blocking the infection from happening. This makes it a decoy, which might be introduced into the body using a nasal spray or nebulizer and run interference to lower the odds of infection. Similar decoy strategies have already shown promise in curbing other viruses, including influenza A, Zika, and dengue.

"This approach could be used as an early intervention to reduce the infection among people who have tested positive, but aren't yet suffering symptoms. But we also see this as part of a larger antiviral strategy," said Robert Linhardt, lead author and a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "Ultimately, we want a vaccine, but there are many ways to combat a virus, and as we've seen with HIV, with the right combination of therapies, we can control the disease until a vaccine is found."

To infect a cell, a virus must first latch onto a specific target on the cell surface, slice through the cell membrane, and insert its own genetic instructions, hijacking the cellular machinery within to produce replicas of the virus. But the virus could just as easily be persuaded to lock onto a decoy molecule, provided that molecule offers the same fit as the cellular target. Once bound to a decoy, the virus would be neutralized, unable to infect a cell or free itself, and would eventually degrade.

[...] "That's exceptional, extremely tight binding," said Jonathan Dordick, a chemical and biological engineering professor at Rensselaer who is collaborating with Linhardt to develop the decoy strategy. "It's hundreds of thousands of times tighter than a typical antibody antigen. Once it binds, it's not going to come off."

Journal Reference:
So Young Kima, Weihua Jin, Amika Sood, et al. Characterization of heparin and severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike glycoprotein binding interactions [$], (DOI: 10.1016/j.antiviral.2020.104873)

Original Submission