They are called 'peptides', are small fragments of proteins produced by an innovative technological platform: new weapons against Covid-19 are taking shape thanks to a new 'forge' all-Italian biotech which act in a targeted manner like bullets.
Some have already been successful in preliminary tests on cells and animal models, so much so that they could soon be transformed into drugs to block the door to the SarsCoV2 virus, and into low-cost sublingual vaccines against the variants. The result is published in the journal Viruses by University of Rome Tor Vergata, University of Catanzaro, IFO and CNR of Rome, in collaboration with the University of Toronto and Renown Health.
The study, supported by Fondazione Roma and by the Ministry of University and Research, began in the spring of 2020, when the outbreak of the pandemic highlighted the urgency of accelerating the search for new drugs and vaccines. In a few months, virologists, immunologists, pharmacologists, geneticists and bioinformaticians combined their skills and developed a mix of technologies for the development of peptides.
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“They are tiny chains of amino acids that act as specific drugs, with less toxicity and limited side effects: there are currently more than 400 peptide-based drugs in development in the world and over 60 already approved for clinical use”, explained the geneticist Joseph Novelli of the University of Rome Tor-Vergata.
And then he added: “Peptides are also very promising against Covid-19: they could constitute a new class of drugs against SarsCoV2 and could help the development of new vaccines and monoclonal antibodies”.
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Moving in this direction, researchers have already managed to identify a series of peptides capable of inhibiting the entry of the SarsCoV2 virus into human cells through the DPP4 receptor (the other entry point in addition to the ACE-2 receptor).
“In vitro tests on cells have confirmed that they could be used as anti-Covid drugs, the first of a peptide nature”, underlines Novelli. “We have also identified some regions of the viral Spike protein that do not mutate easily and that may be the basis of a new generation of vaccines: inoculated into mice, in the form of small peptides, they stimulated the production of antibodies with high titers and excellent neutralizing capacity against the variants of the virus”.
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