Current prophylactic and therapeutic approaches for SARS-CoV-2 are effective, but the need for new approaches with broad activity makes virus-host interactions an essential piece to look at.
For COVID-19, the limited durability of vaccines requires multiple injections, and their effectiveness is continuously challenged by emerging new spike variants of the virus. The SARS-CoV-2 main protease Mpro plays a role in major polyprotein processing events and is essential for viral replication.
Nucleoside or nucleotide antivirals are a common first-line treatment for viral diseases, acting as direct inhibitors of viral replication and transcription. The nucleoside GS-441524 and its prodrug remdesivir have shown broad-spectrum antiviral activity against several virus families, including Flaviviridae, Filoviridae, Pneumoviridae, paramyxoviruses and Coronaviridae.
Pardes Biosciences Inc. has patented 3C-like proteinase (3CLpro; Mpro; nsp5) (SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19 virus) inhibitors reported to be useful for the treatment of viral infections.
Exevir Bio BV has announced research detailing a novel, highly potent, anti-S2 camelid single-domain antibody, discovered at the VIB-Ugent Center for Medical Biotechnology, and developed as a candidate drug molecule by Exevir as XVR-013.
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University presented data from a study that aimed to investigate gut integrity, oxidized lipids and inflammatory markers associated with the pathogenesis of post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC).
The U.S. Recover program, set up in July 2022 to identify the causes of long COVID, find biomarkers of disease and discover new therapeutic targets, is now preparing to move to its next phase and begin testing potential treatments in a multi-arm, randomized, placebo-controlled trial. But with 200 different symptoms, and limited understanding of relevant system-level pathological targets, there are significant hurdles to be overcome.
Autoantibodies are typically not good news. But a group of researchers from Bellinzona, Switzerland, have observed that the presence of autoantibodies against chemokines, a special class of cytokines, is associated with mild disease and less risk of developing long COVID. “Our hypothesis was that antibodies to chemokines, if they existed, would also be associated with a negative outcome of the disease. But, what we found, in fact, was the exact opposite of what we were predicting,” Davide Robbiani, director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine, told BioWorld.
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