Covid-19: Eye-disease drug can stop reproduction of coronavirus, finds study

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The scientists, therefore, identified the Hippo signalling pathway as a potential target for therapies against the coronavirus. (AFP)Premium
The scientists, therefore, identified the Hippo signalling pathway as a potential target for therapies against the coronavirus. (AFP)

The drug called verteporfin, that is used to treat eye-disease, may be a candidate to treat Covid-19, a study in US has revealed

As scientists across the globe clamor to find drugs that would help get rid of the fatal coronavirus, a recent interdisciplinary study, led by University of California, Los Angeles and published in PLOS Biology, has shown that a drug that has been approved by US to treat eye diseases can be used to stop the reproduction of SARS-CoV-2. 

The drug called verteporfin, that is used to treat eye-disease, may be a candidate to treat Covid-19, and its status as FDA-approved could make it easier to launch clinical trials, the study has shown. 

The study has revealed that the Hippo signalling pathway is activated within days of SARS-CoV-2 infection, suggesting that treatments using the mechanism could be deployed before symptoms arise to reduce the severity of disease.

Signalling pathways are complicated chain reactions which control many important human biological processes and in which certain proteins act as messenger molecules that promote or block the signals of other proteins.

The scientists, therefore, identified the Hippo signalling pathway as a potential target for therapies against the coronavirus.

The scientists performed experiments using tissue samples from people with Covid-19, as well as cultured human heart and lung cells selected to closely reflect how healthy cells respond to SARS-CoV-2 infection, the study said.

They observed changes in many genes involved with the Hippo signalling pathway after infection. In addition, they examined a protein called YAP, or Yes-associated protein, whose activity is blocked when the Hippo pathway is activated, according to the study.

The scientists found that in the cultured human cells, both the original strain and Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 activated the Hippo pathway in the first few days after infection.

When they silenced this pathway and increased YAP, the virus replicated itself more. The team also pretreated cells with verteporfin, which blocks YAP in the eye disease known as choroidal neovascularization, and then infected them with SARS-CoV-2, the study said.

In the verteporfin-treated cells, concentrations of the coronavirus were below detectable levels, compared to more than 60,000 units of the virus per millilitre in an untreated control group, according to the study.

The lead researchers were investigating the Hippo pathway, which controls the size of organs in the body, in earlier National Institutes of Health–funded studies of the Zika virus, which can cause undersized brains in infants. Noticing that this pathway also seemed to have virus-fighting effects, they launched the current study investigating SARS-CoV-2, the study said. 

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