(Press-News.org) (Boston) – A team of scientists from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have identified a novel compound that inhibits viruses from replicating. The findings, which are published online in the Journal of Virology, could lead to the development of highly targeted compounds to block the replication of poxviruses, such as the emerging infectious disease Monkeypox.
The basic research was led by Ken Dower, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of John Connor, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology at BUSM who is corresponding author on the paper. They worked with Scott Schaus, PhD, associate professor of chemistry from the Boston University College of Arts & Sciences and co-principal investigator in the Center for Chemical Methodology and Library Development (CMLD). The researchers collaborated with the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), who conducted the experiments involving Monkeypox at their laboratory in Maryland.
Poxviruses, such as smallpox, vaccinia virus and the Monkeypox virus, invade host cells and replicate, causing disease. Smallpox, a deadly poxvirus that killed hundreds of millions of people worldwide, was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1979 after successful vaccination efforts. Recent data shows that the number of people being infected by Monkeypox is increasing globally.
Utilizing state of the art screening techniques, vaccinia and a library of chemicals from CMLD, Dower and his colleagues looked for compounds that could stop vaccinia from replicating inside human cells. They identified several. In studying how one of these compounds work, they discovered that the virus can enter the cell in its presence, but once the virus was inside, the compound inactivates an essential piece of virus machinery.
USAMRIID researchers then tested the efficacy of the chemical compound on the Monkeypox virus. Their experiments demonstrated similar results, showing that this chemical compound has the ability to inhibit different varieties of poxviruses.
"The compound we identified forces the catastrophic failure of the normal virus amplification cycle and illustrates a new drug-accessible restriction point for poxviruses in general," said Connor. "This can help us in developing new compounds that fight poxviruses infection."
###This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Transformative Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI).
BUSM researchers identify novel compound to halt virus replication
2012-01-05
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Weatherford International use ONELAN to Improve Communications
2012-01-05
One of the largest oilfield services companies, Weatherford International is headquartered in Switzerland, and currently operates in more than 100 countries across the world, employing more than 52,000 people. The company has regional hubs in major energy-producing regions such as Asia, Canada, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, and the United States. Weatherford has a product and service portfolio that spans the life cycle of a well including drilling, evaluation, completion, production and intervention as well as research and development.
Weatherford selected ...
Bat brains parse sounds for multitasking
2012-01-05
Washington, D.C. – Imagine listening to music while carrying on a conversation with friends. This type of multi-tasking is fairly easy to do, right? That's because our brains efficiently and effectively separate the auditory signals – music to the right side; conversation to the left. But what researchers have not been able to do in humans or animals is to see a parsing of duties at the single neuron level – until now.
Publishing in the European Journal of Neuroscience, renowned bat researcher Jagmeet Kanwal, PhD, associate professor in the department of neurology at ...
Death rate measure used to judge hospital quality may be misleading
2012-01-05
Hospitals, health insurers and patients often rely on patient death rates in hospitals to compare hospital quality. Now a new study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine questions the accuracy of that widely used approach and supports measuring patient deaths over a period of 30 days from admission even after they have left the hospital.
Published in the Jan. 3 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, the study has wide implications as quality measures take on more importance in the healthcare system, notes Elizabeth Drye, M.D., a research scientist at Yale School of ...
NAFA Explains Risk Management With New Webinar Series
2012-01-05
In a perfect world, businesses would never have to deal with uncertainty. Fleet managers, who have to face everything from monetary losses due to vehicles involved in crashes to the loss of life itself, realize this isn't a perfect world. Since it is neither possible nor practical to insure against every situation, it is up to the fleet manager to make sure their vehicles are safe, drivers are trained, and crashes are prevented. To help fleet managers learn more about risk management, NAFA Fleet Management Association is running a Risk Management 101 webinar series February ...
Home monitoring may help manage and reduce costs for heart failure
2012-01-05
Heart failure affects 5.8 million people in the U.S. alone and is responsible for nearly 1 million hospitalizations each year, most resulting from a build-up of body fluid in the lungs and other organs due to the heart's inability to pump effectively. The disease needs to be closely tracked in order to avoid such hospitalizations, and home-monitoring interventions may be especially useful, UCLA researchers say.
In their new paper, the UCLA authors discuss the importance of heart failure disease-management and early identification, as well as the treatment of body-fluid ...
Autism may be linked to abnormal immune system characteristics and novel protein fragment
2012-01-05
Tampa, FL (Jan 3, 2012) – Immune system abnormalities that mimic those seen with autism spectrum disorders have been linked to the amyloid precursor protein (APP), reports a research team from the University of South Florida's Department of Psychiatry and the Silver Child Development Center.
The study, conducted with mouse models of autism, suggests that elevated levels of an APP fragment circulating in the blood could explain the aberrations in immune cell populations and function – both observed in some autism patients. The findings were recently published online in ...
Warner Norcross Partner Elected President of Community Circle Theater
2012-01-05
Warner Norcross & Judd LLP Partner Scott Keller has been elected president of the Community Circle Theatre board of directors.
Keller, who concentrates his law practice on intellectual property, has served as vice president of the organization for the past three years and has been a board member for more than six years. Circle Theatre produces five main stage and one children's Magic Circle productions from May through September, as well as provides curriculum-supporting productions to local schools through its Circle Presents program and hosts cabarets and special ...
Powertec Home Gym Redesigns its Online Magazine
2012-01-05
Powertec Inc., the World's Best Selling Plate Loaded Home Gym Brand, has launched its newly designed online magazine site, the Powertec Online Magazine.
Uniquely engineered for the serious lifter, the Powertec brand maximizes weight capacities using Olympic plates vs. the rest of the competitors utilizing on limited resistance pin-stack weights. And with the launch of the Powertec Online Magazine, fitness enthusiasts and loyal Powertec customers will get the chance to know more about Team Powertec athletes such as Rob Riches and Ian Lauer, get helpful tips on diet and ...
Manipulating way bacteria 'talk' could have practical applications, Texas A&M profs say
2012-01-05
COLLEGE STATION, Jan. 3, 2011 – By manipulating the way bacteria "talk" to each other, researchers at Texas A&M University have achieved an unprecedented degree of control over the formation and dispersal of biofilms – a finding with potentially significant health and industrial applications, particularly to bioreactor technology.
Working with E. coli bacteria, Professor Thomas K. Wood and Associate Professor Arul Jayaraman of the university's Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering have employed specific signals sent and received between bacteria to trigger ...
Maternal liver grafts more tolerable for children with rare disease
2012-01-05
Children with a rare, life-threatening disease that is the most common cause of neonatal liver failure – biliary atresia – better tolerate liver transplants from their mothers than from their fathers, according to a UCSF-led study.
In the study, researchers reviewed all pediatric liver transplants nationwide from 1996 to 2010, and compared the outcomes for patients who received liver grafts from their mothers with those for patients who received livers from their fathers.
Researchers believe the improved outcomes for children receiving a maternal liver graft may be ...