New Treatment Against COVID-19

Although Traditional antivirals like Tamiflu, zanamivir and remdesivir reduce the symptoms of COVID-19, need for alternative treatment approaches arise in a pandemic. An international team of scientists, from Australia and the US discovers an experimental direct-acting antiviral therapy against Covid-19 that reduces the viral load by 99.9 percent.

Griffith University and City of Hope designs this treatment approach using gene-silencing RNA technology called siRNA (small-interfering RNA) to attack the virus' genome directly with lipid nanoparticles to deliver directly to lungs.

"Treatment with virus-specific siRNA reduces viral load by 99.9 per cent. These stealth nanoparticles can be delivered to a wide range of lung cells and silence viral genes," said co-lead researcher Nigel McMillan, Professor at Menzies Health Institute Queensland (MHIQ) at Griffith.

The findings of the experiment published in the journal Molecular Therapy shows that treating SARS-Cov-2 infected mice with this therapy improves the survival and loss of disease.

They also discovered that nanoparticles were stable at 4 degrees Celsius for 12 months and at room temperature for greater than one month so that they will be used in low-resource settings to treat infected patients.

"These nanoparticles are scalable and relatively cost-effective to produce in bulk," added Kevin Morris, Professor and associate director of the Centre for Gene Therapy at City of Hope.

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As these siRNA-nanoparticle formulations work on all beta coronaviruses and its variants, so they can be used as a therapy to treat Covid-19 patients in the future.

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Source-Medindia