While winter has led to a dangerous increase in infections, which combined with the great spread of the ‘Australian’ flu is putting thousands of Italians to bed, on the scientific front there is a possible turning point in the fight against the coronavirus. A drug that has long been used to treat a particular liver disorder has in fact paved the way towards one new idea of anti-Covid-19 drugs: instead of using the virus as a target, the aim is to close its access door, that is, the receptors present on human cells.
The discovery was published in the journal Nature and is due to the Italian researcher of the British University of Cambridge, Teresa Brevini.
The mechanism
As stated on the ANSA website, which has resumed the news, in tests the new drug targets proteins that do not change, unlike those of the virus, and the drug should therefore also be effective against present and future variants of the SarsCoV2 virus, and perhaps also against new coronaviruses that may emerge. The drug, called Udca, has already been tested against Covid-19 on laboratory-grown mini-organs (organoids), hamsters, human lungs and some volunteers, proving to be effective.
What do scientists think
“The current coexistence with Covid-19 is not acceptable, it is a sort of ‘armed truce’, because it does not exclude the onset of more pathogenic variants of the virus”, he tells ANSA Ernesto Carafoli, of the Zurich Polytechnic and the University of Padua and member of the Accademia dei Lincei, not involved in the study. “This research responds well to the need to completely knock out the virus and the idea behind it is the right one, however – adds Carafoli – a general strategy is missing, because we cannot rely on just one moleculeespecially if we look to the future. What we need is a database with billions of molecules to address not only the current pandemic, but future ones: if we do nothing, we will die from a viral pandemic much sooner than from the consequences of climate change”.
The Cambridge researchers stumbled upon a hitherto overlooked effect of the drug UDCA while working on liver organoids. They thus saw that this acts on a molecule called Fxr, which in turn closes the ACE2 receptors present on the surface of human cells, the entry doors that the Sars-CoV-2 virus uses to infect them. However, according to Ernesto Carafoli, it is a solution that has a weak point: “ACE2 receptors are essential proteins in our body, so deactivating them is not ideal: it could be a treatment that can be used in an emergency and for a short timebut not a long-term solution. It is precisely for this reason – he underlines – that we need a more systematic approach”.