Researchers able to curb coronavirus growth

A team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) in addition to the Universities of Bern, Lausanne and Cork in the Republic of Ireland has for the first time successfully uncovered the interactions between the SARS-​Cov-2 virus and the cells it infects during a process vital to the survival of the coronavirus. The results have recently been published in the journal “Science”, details of which can be found in a press release.

Alongside the process itself, the molecular biologists were also able to demonstrate how certain chemical compounds can impact the replication mechanism of the coronavirus. In this context, two compounds were found to reduce the viral replication of SARS-​Cov-2 by three to four orders of magnitude, the press release explains further.

Although the compounds are not effective enough to be used as a therapeutic drug, the study has proven that a profound effect on virus growth can be generated by inhibiting the special mechanism triggered by the coronavirus in its host cell, which it uses for the purposes of viral replication. This paves the way towards the development of more effective chemical compounds.

As all forms of coronavirus are reliant on this particular process, known as frameshifting, a drug developed to combat the SARS-​Cov-2 virus may also be useful in treating more distantly related coronaviruses. “The results presented here on SARS-​CoV-2 will also be useful for understanding the frameshifting mechanisms in other RNA viruses”, explains Nenad Ban, Professor for Molecular Biology at ETH Zurich and co-​author of the study, in the press release.