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A Fluorogenic Peptide Cleavage Assay to Screen for Proteolytic Activity: Applications for coronavirus spike protein activation
Published on: January 9, 2019
Synthesis and activity of an octapeptide inhibitor designed for SARS coronavirus main proteinase
Yi-Ru Gan1, He Huang, Yong-Dong Huang
1School of Chemical Engineering & Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China. lifescience@san.rr.com
Abstract:
The outbreak of SARS, a life-threatening disease, has spread over many countries around the world. So far there is no effective drug for the treatment of SARS. Stimulated by the binding mechanism of SARS-CoV Mpro with the octapeptide AVLQSGFR reported recently as well as the "Chou's distorted key" theory, we synthesized the octapeptide AVLQSGFR for conducting various biochemical experiments to investigate the antiviral potential of the octapeptide against SARS coronavirus (BJ-01). The results demonstrate that, compared with other compounds reported so far, AVLQSGFR is the most active in inhibiting replication of the SARS coronavirus, and that no detectable toxicity is observed on Vero cells under the condition of experimental concentration.
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