Metabolic

New potential treatment for Covid-19 identified by researchers | Bless you

Researchers in a recent study identified a potential new treatment that suppresses replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

In order to multiply, all viruses, including coronaviruses, infect cells and reprogram them to produce new viruses. The study “Targeting the Pentose Phosphate Path for SARS-CoV-2 therapy” was published in the journal Metabolite.

Research found that cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 can only produce novel coronaviruses when their metabolic pentose phosphate pathway is activated.

When using the drug benfooxythiamine, an inhibitor of this signaling pathway, SARS-CoV-2 replication was suppressed and infected cells did not produce any coronaviruses.

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Studies by the School of Biosciences at the University of Kent and the Institute for Medical Virology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main showed that the drug also increases the antiviral activity of “2-deoxy-D-glucose”; a drug that alters the host cell’s metabolism to reduce virus replication.

This shows that pentose phosphate pathway inhibitors such as benfooxythiamine, both alone and in combination with other treatments, represent a potential new treatment option for Covid-19.

In addition, benfooxythiamine’s antiviral mechanism is different from that of other Covid-19 drugs such as remdesivir and molnupiravir. Therefore, viruses that are resistant to these can be sensitive to benfooxythiamine.

Professor Martin Michaelis, University of Kent, said, “This is a breakthrough in research into Covid-19 treatment. Since the development of resistance is a major problem in the treatment of viral diseases, therapies with different goals are very important and offer further benefits, hope to be able to develop the most effective treatments for Covid-19. “

“The targeted targeting of virus-related changes in the host cell metabolism is an attractive way to intervene in the virus replication process in a targeted manner,” adds Professor Jindrich Cinatl from the Goethe University in Frankfurt.

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