The antiviral effects of thiol drugs in COVID-19 APSPhysiology UCSFHospitals COVID19 antiviral coronavirus covid
By Tarun Sai LomteJul 1 2022Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc. A recent study published in the American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology investigated the effects of thiol drugs on severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 .
Previously, the current study’s researchers revealed that mucin disulfide crosslinks could be targeted using drugs that contain functional thiol groups, which led to speculation that thiol drugs could cleave cystines in the S protein’s receptor-binding domain to disrupt ACE2 binding. Next, they tested the inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 infection of HEK293T cells using vesicular stomatitis virus -derived pseudoviruses coated with SARS-CoV-2 S protein. PVs were pretreated with thiol drugs for two hours, and a diluted mix was used to infect cells. As a control, cells were treated with drugs for two hours, followed by drug removal and infection with untreated PVs.
Subsequently, the VSV-PV infection assay was repeated with PVs coated separately with S proteins of SARS-CoV-2 variants using the most potent thiol drugs. Additionally, methyl 6-thio-6-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside , a novel thiol saccharide molecule, was tested. Consistently, they observed that WR-1065 and cysteamine potently inhibited PV entry. Pretreatment of cells with drugs had no significant effect.