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Rescue and Characterization of Recombinant Virus from a New World Zika Virus Infectious Clone
Published on: June 7, 2017
Repurposing of Doramectin as a New Anti-Zika Virus Agent
Yujia Zhu1,2, Minqi Liang1,2, Jianchen Yu3,4
1School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510080, China.
Abstract:
Zika virus (ZIKV), belonging to the Flavivirus family and mainly transmitted by mosquitoes, causes a variety of adverse outcomes, including Guillain-Barré syndrome, microcephaly, and meningoencephalitis. However, there are no approved vaccines or drugs available for ZIKV. The discovery and research on drugs for ZIKV are still essential. In this study, we identified doramectin, an approved veterinary antiparasitic drug, as a novel anti-ZIKV agent (EC50 value from 0.85 μM to 3.00 μM) with low cytotoxicity (CC50 > 50 μM) in multiple cellular models. The expression of ZIKV proteins also decreased significantly under the treatment of doramectin. Further study showed that doramectin directly interacted with the key enzyme for ZIKV genome replication, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), with a stronger affinity (Kd = 16.9 μM), which may be related to the effect on ZIKV replication. These results suggested that doramectin might serve as a promising drug candidate for anti-ZIKV.
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