[ad_1]
Professor Dimitar Dimitrov (fourth from right to left) with his team. Part of him is Bulgarian Prof. Doncho Zhelev, deputy director of the Center for Antibody Therapy at the University of Pittsburgh, specialist in infectious diseases (second from left).
The future drug will prevent infection.
The smallest biological molecule to date that completely neutralizes the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has been discovered by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh. The study was led by Bulgarian Dimitar Dimitrov, lead author of the publication in the authoritative medical journal Cell and director of the Center for Antibody Therapy at the University of Pittsburgh.
The promising molecule is 10 times smaller than the full-length antibody and was used to make a drug called Ab8. It is expected to be used as a therapeutic and prophylactic agent against the virus that causes COVID-19.
The drug does not bind to human cells, etc.
minimizes
the negatives
side
effects,
say American experts. They ran a rapid analysis of 100 billion potential molecules that could bind to the coronavirus protein involved in infecting the body. In experiments with mice and hamsters, Ab8 has been shown to be very effective in preventing and treating coronavirus infection. Other experiments showed that even the lowest doses of Ab8 significantly reduced the number of viral particles in coronavirus-infected laboratory animals.
The small size of the molecule allows the drug to be administered by alternative routes, including inhalation.
“Ab8 not only has potential as a therapy against COVID-19, but it can also be used to prevent people from becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2,” said study co-author John Mellers, head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at University of Pittsburgh.
Professor Dimitar
Dimitrov is one
From the beginning
who discovers
neutralizing
antibodies
for the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus in 2003. In the years that followed, his team also discovered potent antibodies against many other infectious diseases, including those caused by the Middle East respiratory syndrome viruses dengue, hendra, and nipa.
Dimitar Dimitrov graduated from Sofia University with a dissertation in chemistry. He defended his doctoral thesis in biology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where he worked as a senior research associate. Since 1990, he has served as a principal investigator at the United States National Institutes of Health. In 2017, he founded the Center for Therapeutic Antibodies at the University of Pittsburgh, where he currently works as a director and professor of medicine.
“Antibodies create passive immunity, so it is temporary: a few months, one to four, depending on the antibody. For this period, an injection is needed, which contains about 1 gram of antibody,” says Professor Dimitrov, cited by the “BG Voice” site. According to him, future therapy will be effective on mutations in COVID-19.
The Ab8 drug evaluation was conducted in collaboration with scientists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Medical Branch of the University of Texas at Galveston, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Saskatchewan.
At the same time, Russian molecular biologists have reported that they have found in human and mouse cells an RNA molecule capable of binding to particles of various types of coronavirus and
slow down theirs
reproduction,
delivered to TASS.
Stepan Nerisyan, a junior researcher at the National Research University in Moscow, said the team had discovered the microRNA particle miR-21, which is capable of binding to all human coronaviruses.
The virus is believed to use it to slow its reproduction in the early stages of infection to delay the body’s active immune response.
Nerisyan’s team isolated four miRNA families that bind to all coronaviruses found in humans. In experiments with mice, it was found that when rodents were infected with SARS, the concentration of mir-21-3p molecules was eight times higher in the lung cells of diseased animals.
With them, the pathogen tends to be less noticeable by the acute immune response in the early stages of infection, when it can be easily destroyed. Scientists can take advantage of this characteristic of the coronavirus artificially by increasing the concentration of miR-21-3p molecules in the patient’s body.
[ad_2]
