Researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) have found a drug that blocks the SARS-CoV-2 virus from infecting its hosts. The study, which was led by Dr. Josef Penninger, provides insight into how the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes the COVID-19 disease and how it affects blood vessels and kidneys.
According to Dr. Penninger, a professor in UBC’s faculty of medicine and director of the Life Sciences Institute and the Canada 150 Research Chair in Functional Genetics at UBC, says, “We are hopeful our results have implications for the development of a novel drug for the treatment of this unprecedented pandemic. his work stems from an amazing collaboration among academic researchers and companies, including Dr. Ryan Conder's gastrointestinal group at STEMCELL Technologies in Vancouver, Nuria Montserrat in Spain, Drs. Haibo Zhang and Art Slutsky from Toronto and especially Ali Mirazimi's infectious biology team in Sweden, who have been working tirelessly day and night for weeks to better understand the pathology of this disease and to provide breakthrough therapeutic options."
At the center of much COVID-19 research is the ACE2 protein, which is thought to be the key receptor for SARS-CoV-2. ACE2 was found to be key in the SARS outbreak in 2003 and has also been linked to both heart disease and lung failure. Says Dr. Art Slutsky, one of the study collaborators and a scientist at the Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science of St. Michael's Hospital and professor at the University of Toronto, says, “Our new study provides very much needed direct evidence that a drug -- called APN01 (human recombinant soluble angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 - hrsACE2) -- soon to be tested in clinical trials by the European biotech company Apeiron Biologics, is useful as an antiviral therapy for COVID-19.”
The scientists analyzed cell cultures and found that hrsACE2 inhibited the coronavirus by a factor of 1000 to 5000. They used replicas of human blood vessels and kidneys to grow stem cells that they directly infected with the virus and found that the virus was able to duplicate itself in these tissues. This is important because it means that in severe cases of COVID-19 it is possible to have multiple organ failure and heart damage related to ACE2.
"The virus causing COVID-19 is a close sibling to the first SARS virus," says Penninger. "Our previous work has helped to rapidly identify ACE2 as the entry gate for SARS-CoV-2, which explains a lot about the disease. Now we know that a soluble form of ACE2 that catches the virus away could be indeed a very rational therapy that specifically targets the gate the virus must take to infect us. There is hope for this horrible pandemic."
The study is published in Cell.