In future-looking research, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine scientists have identified a novel target for a drug to treat SARS-CoV-2 that also could impact a new emerging coronavirus.

"God forbid we need this, but we will be ready," said Karla Satchell, professor of microbiology-immunology at Feinberg, who leads an international team of scientists to analyze the important structures of the virus. The Northwestern team previously mapped the structure of a virus protein called nsp16, which is present in all coronaviruses. This new study provides critical information that could aid drug development against future coronaviruses as well as SARS-CoV-2.

The idea is this future drug would work early in the infection. If somebody around you gets the coronavirus, you would run to the drugstore to get your medication and take it for three or four days. If you were sick, you wouldn't get as sick. Satchell's team has mapped or 'solved' three new protein structures in three-dimensional views and discovered a secret identifier in the machinery that helps the virus hide from the immune system.

They discovered a coronavirus-specific pocket in the protein, nsp16 that binds the virus-genomic fragment held in place by a metal ion. The fragment is used by the coronavirus as the template for all the viral building blocks.

There is potential to make a drug to fit this unique pocket that would block function of this protein from the coronavirus. It would not block the function of a similar protein from human cells that lacks the pocket. Thus, such a drug would only target the invader protein.

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John
Editorial Assistant
Immunogenetics Open Access