{"id":1588,"date":"2020-08-31T03:59:01","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T08:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2020-08-31T03:59:01","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T08:59:01","slug":"the-combination-of-vacuolin-1-and-apilimod-is-expected-to-fight-sars-cov-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/the-combination-of-vacuolin-1-and-apilimod-is-expected-to-fight-sars-cov-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The combination of vacuolin-1 and apilimod is expected to fight SARS-CoV-2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent study, researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Washington University in St. Louis found that two drugs inhibited SARS-CoV-2<\/u><\/a>, which causes COVID-19, in human cell tests. Both of these two drugs, vaccine-1 and apilimod, developed years ago, target a large enzyme called PIKfyve<\/u><\/a>\u00a0kinase. Previously, little was known about the role of this enzyme in SARS-CoV-2 infection. The relevant research results were recently published in PNAS.<\/p>\n

The co-corresponding author of the paper, Dr. Tomas Kirchhausen of the Cellular and Molecular Medicine Project of Boston Children\u2019s Hospital, said, \u201cOur findings show that targeting this kinase through a small-molecule antiviral against SARS-CoV-2 may be an effective strategy to lessen the progression or seriousness of COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early research shows that vacuolin-1 and apilimod<\/u><\/a>\u00a0are effective against Ebola virus<\/p>\n

When Kirchhausen discovered vacuolin-1 16 years ago, he and his colleagues at the Center for Excellence in Translational Research of Harvard Medical School began a long-term study of small molecules against emerging viruses. They found that both vacuolin-1 and apilimod, which are chemically similar, are effective inhibitors against Ebola virus, but they did not publish their findings at the time.<\/p>\n

Vacuolin-1 and apilimod can also prevent SARS-CoV-2 virus infection<\/p>\n

Kirchhausen and Dr. Sean Whelan at the University of Washington conducted cell biology research with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Kirchhausen said, \u201cWithin a week, we knew that apilimod was very effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 from infecting human cells in the laboratory.\u201d In April 2020, he first published this discovery on the BioRxiv pre-print website. Kirchhausen added, \u201cWe found that, like apilimod, vacuolin-1 is also a very strong inhibitor of viral infection in the laboratory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apilimod is now used in COVID-19 clinical trials<\/p>\n

Currently, AI Therapeutics has obtained FDA approval to study aripipimod against COVID-19 to see whether it can reduce the severity of the disease. In late July this year, AI Therapeutics announced the use of apilimod to carry out a new clinical study that will test the safety, tolerability and effectiveness of apilimod in reducing the amount of virus in patients with early-onset COVID-19 disease.<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

1. Alice McCarthy,\u201cTwo drugs join forces against COVID-19\u201d (2020).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent study, researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Washington University in St. Louis found that two drugs inhibited SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, in human cell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[604,597],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1590,"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions\/1590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bocsci.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}