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A man with COVID-19 is treated at an intensive care unit in Rome.Credit: Antonio Masiello/Getty
Fresh findings about SARS CoV-2 and the disease it causes:
27 March — Viral proteins point to potential treatments
A list of the human proteins affected by the SaRS CoV-2 virus offers a guide to potential treatments for infected people.
A team led by Nevan Krogan at the University of California, San Francisco, engineered human cells to produce one of 26 proteins made by the coronavirus (D. E. Gordon et al. preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.22.002386; 2020). This allowed the researchers to identify human proteins that physically interact with coronavirus proteins.
Out of 332 interactions between human and viral proteins, the authors identified 67 that existing or candidate drugs could potentially disrupt. The researchers and their collaborators are now testing some of these compounds for antiviral activity — and urge others to do the same.