New compound fights bird and swine flu
A newly identified chemical compound has shown promising results in preventing H5N1 bird and seasonal human flu viruses from replicating, a new study finds.
Latest figures revealed that the new H1N1 swine flu and the seasonal H1N1 virus have claimed the lives of a considerable number of individuals world-wide.
While various types of antiviral drugs have been used to fight flu viruses, recent studies have reported that the mutated strains of the virus have become resistant to the majority of the available drugs, leaving a limited number of them still effective.
"Tamiflu is the market leader, but the big problem is that it doesn't always work. We are still waiting to find out how it worked during the swine flu epidemic. Tamiflu is good, but it's far from perfect - a lot of people died. If we could come up with a more powerful drug than Tamiflu that would be very good," said lead researcher Richard Yao.
According to the study published in Nature Biotechnology, nucleozin, selected from a chemical library with more than 50,000 compounds, can fight both seasonal flu viruses and the H5N1 in mice and cell culture.
Nucleozin is a highly potent compound that targets nucleoprotein, a protein responsible for leading the viral genome into the cell nucleus, assisting viral transcription and genome replication and facilitating viral genome assembly.
"We have now brand-new weapons to combat influenza virus resistant to ... (antiviral drugs like) oseltamivir and zanamivir," Yao added.
Scientists concluded that the compound is effective in fighting H1N1, H3N2, and H5N1 flu virus strains and therefore can be used as a target to develop antiviral therapeutics against influenza in the near future.
Source: presstv.ir
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