An immunology expert has hailed a new study as a “very important first step” towards developing a drug that can treat severe cases of COVID-19.
Scientists at the University of Bristol have published a “ground-breaking” new study they believe could lead to the development of a new drug that can prevent COVID-19 from infecting human cells.
By analysing the virus at a molecular level, they found a tailor-made pocket within the Spike protein which ‘sequesters’ linoleic acid (LA).
LA plays a vital role in reducing inflammation, which is one of the things which makes the virus so deadly in severe cases.
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Kingston Mills Professor of Experimental Immunology at Trinity College in Dublin said they now hope that by combining LA with the antiviral drug Remdesivir, they may be able to prevent the virus from replicating in humans.
“What they found is that the virus sequestered this natural polyunsaturated fatty acid called linoleic acid,” he said.
“You might have heard of it; people might take this a supplement sometimes in fact. Safflower and sunflower oil are used sometimes as supplements.
“But it turns out that these oils are very effective at stopping inflammation and one thing that happens during COVID-19 is people get severe inflammation.
“What the virus does is it grabs the linoleic acid and holds it in a pocket and stops the body then from using it to quell the inflammation.
“The scientists were able to take a drug that people might have heard of called Remdesivir which is an anti-viral drug which has proved moderately effective at controlling COVID-19 in patients and they have combined that drug with linoleic acid and shown that in culture it stops the virus from replicating.
“It is the first step really; we have a long way to go before we have a drug that can treat people.”
He said there is a long way to go but the study offers scientists something they can target.
“Linoleic acid itself would not be the drug; what they would make would be a small molecule that would mimic that pocket in the virus and use that as a way to treating people,” he said.
“But that is a little bit down the line yet. It is a very important first step in it. That is the way the process of drug discovery operates. You make stepwise discoveries and this is a very important first step in this.
“So, it does give us hope that we know at least how we could go about targeting the virus with an alternative to what is out there already which is mainly Remdesivir which is only moderately effective.”
