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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)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 17 2020, @03:17AM (5 children)
Careful with that Nirvana [wikipedia.org] of yours, keep it under control; you're balancing on the brink of saying sexual reproduction is a problem.
Do you really-really feel the need of publicly demonstrating your life-style superiority, or maybe your superiority, to the point of indulging in fallacies?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @05:18AM
You wrote "fallacies" and I read "phalluses".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @08:36AM (1 child)
As a straight male I read those comments as factual observations. Not feeling attacked in any way, you must have some insecurities about your sexual proclivities ;)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 17 2020, @09:28AM
I'm not objecting to the factual observations, I'm objecting to the conclusions derived from them ("The problem is is male biology, " followed by "Gay women are cleanest, followed by straights of both sexes (I forget the order), trailed by gay men.")
I'm quite sure STD-es aren't the most critical things when considering the various compromises leading to the evolution of procreation by penetrative sex for a significant enough part of the animal regnum. Were it to be such a big problem, all the species relying on this mode would simply have gone extinct after such a long time [wikipedia.org] (or evolve into something not using it).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday July 18 2020, @12:21AM (1 child)
No, I just find it 1) hilarious and 2) a useful counterpoint to the conservative wharrgarbl about "hurr hurr duh homer-sexshuls are pits of plague and filth!!11111one"
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 18 2020, @01:27AM
Got it. Now. I mean only now.
(maybe you can work it next time in the first post, causes for the Poe's law and whatnot? Anyway, fridays are just not my days lately)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford