Dr. Nihal Altan-Bonnet and her team at Rutgers University have found a potential panviral drug target, or a target that appears across several viruses. She presented her research last week at the ASCB Annual Meeting.
Seeking a more efficient way to fight life-threatening viral infections than individual, virus specific vaccines, Dr. Altan-Bonnet turned to the replication sites viruses form on the surface of membrane-bound organelles for a possible solution. What she and her colleagues discovered is that the membrane platforms of three different viruses — poliovirus, coxsackievirus, and hepatitis C — all rely on a specific lipid.
The lipid, phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P), is made by four lipid-modifying enzymes in the body, but viruses hijack only one, a type-III PI4-kinase, to generate the lipid. This enzyme is an excellent target for pharmacological agents, says Dr. Atlan-Bonnet, since the host can continue to meet his or her PI4P needs with the three other enzymes.
When the researchers blocked type III PI4 kinase, replication stopped in all three of the viruses they looked at. They are now expanding their research to see what other viruses use this platform.
To read more of Dr. Altan-Bonnet’s work, please click here.
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