-Shristi Sharma, Team bioXone
Researchers from Duke University have found a drug against enterovirus 71, a virus that causes hand, foot, and mouth disease in infants and young children. While many patients recover in a week after sustaining fever and rashes, some even face paralysis and brain edema in severe cases.
The drug compound in interest is a small molecule that shows an affinity towards the virus’s RNA (genetic material). Hereby, binding to it, changes its shape in 3D, giving access to Human repressor proteins that block the ‘reading out’ of the virus’s replication instructions; rendering it harmless for the human host.
There is no FDA approved drug for the disease in the market. Most researchers have mainly targetted protein binding elements, and completely overlooked the potential of small molecules that target RNA.
Hence, the future of drugs may rest upon antiviral treatments, such as binding fragments of compounds that could render the viruses incapable of causing diseases.
Source: Jesse Davila-Calderon, Neeraj N. Patwardhan, Liang-Yuan Chiu, Andrew Sugarman, Zhengguo Cai, Srinivasa R. Penutmutchu, Mei-Ling Li, Gary Brewer, Amanda E. Hargrove, Blanton S. Tolbert. IRES-targeting small molecule inhibits enterovirus 71 replication via allosteric stabilization of a ternary complex. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18594-3
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Plant ABC transporters
–Dr. Ayan Raichaudhuri & Anuska Sen, Team BioXone The ATP-binding cassette (ABC) protein superfamily present in most eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms, form one of the largest protein families known, the majority of whose members are membrane proteins (ABC “transporters”). These transporters use ATP to pump molecules across a membrane and so are known to be […]