[ZenGum]

The full article is too long to paste, but here is the link.


The idea is to fight viruses, not by attacking proteins on the surface of the virus itself (the current method, which is vulnerable to the viruses making tiny mutations) but by turning off one of the protiens in the host cells which the virus relies on to reproduce. The advantages are (1) no resitance to the drugs and (2) broad spectrum antivirals, including "on the shelf" treatments for new diseases before they even emerge.

Some highlights:

They are working on an entirely new class of antiviral drugs that should do something seemingly impossible: work against a wide range of existing viruses and also be effective against viruses that have not even evolved yet. What's more, it should be extremely difficult for any virus to become resistant to these drugs.

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Back in the late 1990s, when Goldblatt was at DARPA, he began to wonder whether there was another strategy, one that exploits the key weakness of all viruses: their utter dependence on their hosts. By themselves, viruses are more helpless than newborn babies. They can replicate only by tricking their host cells into making more copies of them, a process that can involve hundreds of host proteins.

What if, Goldblatt wondered, some host proteins are essential for viral replication but not for the survival of the host? If so, disabling these proteins should block viral replication without killing healthy cells.

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Dubbed FGI-104, the drug inhibits a wide range of viruses in cell culture, including hepatitis C and HIV, and has also been shown to protect mice against Ebola

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So far, the researchers have identified more than 30 viruses that rely on TSG101, from a wide range of virus families. The antibody binds to cells infected with all those they have tested, including flu, Ebola, HIV and herpes, and also reduces HIV below detectable levels in human cells in culture.

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Like the antibody, this drug also works against a number of viruses, including Marburg and parainfluenza, with no apparent serious side effects.

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One compound, for example, has been shown to be effective against six different flaviviruses in tests in cell cultures, including dengue fever, yellow fever, West Nile fever and hepatitis C. In all, the company is developing drugs targeting 14 of the 21 virus families known to cause human disease...

SNIP

The company developing bavituximab, Peregrine Pharmaceuticals of Tustin, California, is now testing it against a variety of other viruses, including HIV, hepatitis C, influenza, measles and members of the smallpox and rabies virus families. So far, every virus they have checked has left a phosphatidylserine footprint. "We feel like there's a good potential that they'll all have it exposed," says the head of Peregrine, Steven King. If he is right, drugs like bavituximab could help fight every known human virus.

I'm sending a heads-up to the Nobel Prize committee...