TRENDING SCIENCE: Eureka! We know how to stop COVID-19 from attacking cells

The COVID-19 threat still looms, despite all the vaccines. “First of all, a new SARS-CoV-2 variant could very well emerge that may not respond to current vaccines,” states a University of Louvain (UCLouvain) press release. “Secondly, the efficacy of the vaccines in the long term remains unknown. Lastly, cases of acute infection are continuing to be reported. And yet, there is no effective treatment to date.”

However, new findings published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’ are looking to change all that. Researcher and study co-author David Alsteens and his team at the Louvain Institute of Biomolecular Science and Technology succeeded in pinpointing what allows the COVID-19 disease to damage body cells. They also managed to block the virus from interacting with the cells. Ultimately, this will prevent infection.“It’s a very promising world first!” adds the UCLouvain statement. “This discovery … raises a huge hope: that of developing an antiviral, in the form of an aerosol, which would help to eradicate the virus in case of infection or high-risk contact!”

For the past two years, the research team has been trying to figure out the exact molecular processes of a cell infection. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has a couple of proteins on the surface. They examined the interaction between sialic acids – sugar residues found on cell surfaces – and the spike protein.The researchers identified a variant of these sugar residues that more robustly interacts with the spike protein than with other sugars. They discovered that the virus dies, thus avoiding an infection. They came up with this breakthrough by blocking the spike protein’s points of attachment. This eliminated any interaction with the cell surface. The findings indicate that the procedure can be done with any virus, regardless of the mutation.

Prof. Alsteens plans to perform tests on mice to see if the blocking technique works on them. Depending on the results, an antiviral based on these sugars could be on its way. “This discovery is also interesting for the future, to counter other viruses with similar attachment factors,” the press release concludes. This research was partly funded by the Horizon 2020 NanoVirus (Deciphering virus-host interactions using correlated confocal-atomic force microscopy) project, for which Prof. Alsteens received a European Research Council Starting Grant.

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