“We arm it with small molecular warheads that end up preventing it from infecting our cells: it’s our revenge on the virus.” details Stuart Lipton, lead author of the study on this drug that could change everything.
More than two and a half years after the start of the health crisisthe virus from Covid-19 continues to reveal itself, but also to mutate and develop. Fortunately, while the 8th wave seems to be taking shape, science continues to apprehend the sickness and always discovers more ways to fight. With the vaccines, first, whose latest update proves effective against the latest versions of Covid-19. With the treatments too.
Indeed, scientists from the Scripps Research Institute, a biomedical research center in the United States (California), describe in the online journal Nature the effects against Covid of a medication already used to fight against Alzheimer’s.
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“A delivery vehicle for its own demise”
“Medication, NMT5described in Nature Chemical Biology on September 29, 2022, covers the SARS-CoV-2 of chemicals that can temporarily alter the human ACE2 receptor, the molecule the virus normally latches onto to infect cells. This means that when the virus is near, its way into human cells via the ACE2 receptor is blocked; in the absence of the virus, however, ACE2 can function as usual”is it explained on the Scripps Research website.
“What’s so good about this drug is that we turn the virus against itself”says lead study author Stuart Lipton. “We arm it with small molecular warheads that end up preventing it from infecting our cells: it’s our revenge on the virus”.
Developed in the 1990s to combat Alzheimer’sthe memantine has proven its effectiveness in animal tests: “Lipton and his team tested a library of compounds similar to memantine in their overall structure but coated with additional pharmacological warheads. They identified the designated drug candidate NMT5 as having two key properties: it could recognize and bind to a pore on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2, and he could chemically modify human ACE2 using a fragment of nitroglycerin as a warhead. The group realized this could turn the virus into a delivery vehicle for its own demise.”.
To be confirmed in humans.