An orally bioavailable broad-spectrum antiviral inhibits SARS-CoV-2 in human airway epithelial cell cultures and multiple coronaviruses in mice
By T. Sheahan, Amy C. Sims, Shuntai Zhou, Rachel L. Graham, A. Pruijssers, Maria L. Agostini, S. Leist, A. Schäfer, K. Dinnon, Laura J. Stevens and 18 more. Science Translational Medicine, 2020
993 citations recorded by the source corpus.
A ribonucleoside analog inhibits SARS-CoV-2 in human airway epithelial cell cultures and SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV in mice. Catastrophic consequences Broad-spectrum antivirals are desirable, particularly in the context of emerging zoonotic infections for which specific interventions do not yet exist. Sheahan et al. tested the potential of a ribonucleoside analog previously shown to be active against other RNA viruses such as influenza and Ebola virus to combat coronaviruses. This drug was effective in cell lines and primary human airway epithelial cultures against multiple coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2. Mouse models of SARS and MERS demonstrated that early treatment reduced viral replication and damage to the lungs. Mechanistically, this drug is incorporated into the viral RNA, inducing mutations and eventually leading to error catastrophe in the virus. In this manner, inducing catastrophe could help avoid catastrophe by stemming the next pandemic. Coronaviruses (CoVs) traffic frequently between species resulting in novel disease outbreaks, most recently exemplified by the newly emerged SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19. Here, we show that the ribonucleoside analog β-d-N4-hydroxycytidine (NHC; EIDD-1931) has broad-spectrum antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV, and related zoonotic group 2b or 2c bat-CoVs, as well as increased potency against a CoV bearing resistance mutations to the nucleoside analog inhibitor remdesivir. In mice infected with SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV, both prophylactic and therapeutic administration of EIDD-2801, an orally bioavailable NHC prodrug (β-d-N4-hydroxycytidine-5′-isopropyl ester), improved pulmonary function and reduced virus titer and body weight loss. Decreased MERS-CoV yields in vitro and in vivo were associated with increased transition mutation frequency in viral, but not host cell RNA, supporting a mechanism of lethal mutagenesis in CoV. The potency of NHC/EIDD-2801 against multiple CoVs and oral bioavailability highlights its potential utility as an effective antiviral against SARS-CoV-2 and other future zoonotic CoVs.
Subfields: Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/40f449e89859948ab1d675c0b331144f0cc56ddf
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In Epidemiology
Citations in the corpus
- Remdesivir: A Review of Its Discovery and Development Leading to Emergency Use Authorization for Treatment of COVID-19 (2020, background): “98 Although in preclinical development, EIDD-1931 is orally bioavailable, a significant advantage compared to remdesivir, and has increased potency against viruses containing mutations in RdRp that conferred increased resistance to remdesivir, supporting the potential for a combination therapy to ad”
- SARS-CoV-2 Orf6 hijacks Nup98 to block STAT nuclear import and antagonize interferon signaling (2020, background): “Next, we assessed whether the same nucleocytoplasmic trafficking defect was also observed in hAce2-HEK293T and Calu3, a human bronchial epithelial cell line that is known to support SARSCoV-2 replication (33).”
- Structural Basis for the Inhibition of the RNA-Dependent RNA Polymerase from SARS-CoV-2 by Remdesivir (2020, background): “EIDD-2801 has been shown to be 3-10 times more potent than Remdesivir in blocking SARSCoV-2 replication(33).”