An existing drug may “downgrade” the level of danger from the coronavirus to that of a common cold, says a Jerusalem researcher, after testing it on infected human tissue.
Professor Yaakov Nahmias says his research shows that the new coronavirus is so cruel because it causes lipids to deposit in the lungs, and that there is a solution to undo the damage: a widely used cholesterol medication called fenofibrate.
“If our clinical studies confirm our findings, this course of treatment could degrade the severity of COVID-19 into nothing worse than a common cold,” said Nahmias.
Get The Start-Up Israel’s Daily Start-Up by email and never miss our top stories.
Unlike remdesivir, which is praised for its effect on coronavirus patients, fenofibrate, sometimes sold under the brand name Tricor, is already accredited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is abundant. Remdesivir is rare and is still pending full approval from regulators like the FDA.
Prof. Yaakov Nahmias of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (right) (courtesy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Nahmias, director of the Hebrew University’s Grass Bioengineering Center, concluded in a joint investigation with Dr. Benjamin tenOever at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. His article was published on an online portal run by Cell Press, editors of biomedical journals, for research that has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Nahmias and tenOever performed laboratory tests on human lung cells infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Nahmias said they came up with the idea that a cholesterol medication could help after studying how the new coronavirus “hijacks” the human body.
He told The Times of Israel: “The question is why this new coronavirus is so different from its close relatives that they only cause a common cold. What we see is that this virus actually changes the lipid metabolism in the human lungs. The new coronavirus causes small drops of lipid to accumulate in the lungs, something that is not normally seen in the lungs in a significant amount. ”
The chemical composition of fenofibrate, a cholesterol-lowering medicine. Atoms are represented as spheres with conventional color coding: hydrogen (white), carbon (gray), oxygen (red), chlorine (green) (iStock)
Similar processes, which depend on the virus that deposits fat, also appear to take place in other parts of the body, such as the liver, Nahmias said.
He believes that the virus does this to perpetuate itself in the host, and that if this process can be stopped, it will stop problems with the organs, usually the lungs, causing the virus to severely affect patients.
He said that the virus interferes with the body’s ability to break down fat, and fenofibrate initiates this process. “The interesting thing about our study is that fenofibrate actually binds to and activates the same site in DNA that the virus turns off, a part of our DNA that allows our cells to burn fat,” he said.
“Virus infection causes lung cells to start accumulating fat, and fenofibrate allows cells to burn it.”
Restarting the process is quick, he said, comparing it to “when you remove the plug from the tub.”
Nahmias said the high level of danger from the coronavirus is not caused by its infectivity or the body’s overall ability to get rid of the virus, but by the unique symptoms it causes. “Your body can easily deal with the virus, all we have to do is deal with the symptoms,” she said.
“We need to give the body time to eliminate the virus without going into respiratory failure. And by doing this I think we can transform it into something much less serious, something like the common cold. “
