Scientists have developed two chemicals that will be used to create drugs against Covıd-19
Two new chemicals that protect against contamination with the SARS-CoV-2 virus was developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the National Center for Research and Technological Development (EKETA), the National Research Foundation (EIE), the Democritus University of Thrace (DPTH) and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (EKPA).
The specific substances will be utilized for the development of new drugs against of the SARS-CoV-2 virus or other similar viruses that use the ACE2 receptor to enter the human body. A patent application has been filed to protect the research results.
The disease COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which can cause severe acute respiratory syndrome.
The virus enters the body through spike protein S, which interacts with the ACE2 receptor on the surface of human cells. Reasoning that pharmacological targeting of this interaction could prevent the virus from infecting or spreading within the body, the researchers virtual-scanned a library of 500,000 chemicals to find potential inhibitors of the interaction between the S spike protein of the coronavirus and the human ACE2 receptor.
The resulting molecules were grouped and classified based on their structure and ability to bind to the S spike, and were further optimized by medicinal chemistry methods. Next, the inhibitory activity of the potential inhibitors was studied in cell bioassays simulating the S-ACE2 spike interaction as well as in infection experiments with the real coronavirus. Two compounds were found to be protective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus by blocking the binding of the viral protein S to the human ACE2 receptor. The new chemicals were found to be specific to the coronavirus and, importantly, their inhibitory activity did not appear to be affected by mutations in the S spike, which are found in variants of the virus.
The interdisciplinary team was formed by the researchers Spyro Petrakis, Petros Dara and Costas Stamatopoulos (EKETA), Theodora Kalogeropoulou, Maria Koufaki and Dimitrios Papachatzi (EIE), Ioannis Karakasiliotis (DPTH), Vasilios Gorgoulis (EKPA) and their collaborators Ioannis Gekas, Apostolos Axenopoulos, Stelios Mylonas, Sotiris Katsamakas, Marios Dimitriou, Theano Fotopoulou, Georgios Magoulas and Alia Cristina Tenchiu.
Source :Skai
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