Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
Volume 23, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/ijms23020883
Keywords
antimicrobial peptides; SARS-CoV-2; HSV-1; antiviral drugs; coronavirus; antiviral therapy
Funding
- PRIN 2017 Natural and pharmacological inhibition of the early phase of viral replication (VirSudNet) [2017M8R7N9]
- Valere project of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli
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Peptide AR-23 derived from amphibian secretion shows potent antiviral activity against various enveloped viruses in the early stages of infection, indicating its potential therapeutic effects.
Viral infections represent a serious threat to the world population and are becoming more frequent. The search and identification of broad-spectrum antiviral molecules is necessary to ensure new therapeutic options, since there is a limited availability of effective antiviral drugs able to eradicate viral infections, and consequently due to the increase of strains that are resistant to the most used drugs. Recently, several studies on antimicrobial peptides identified them as promising antiviral agents. In detail, amphibian skin secretions serve as a rich source of natural antimicrobial peptides. Their antibacterial and antifungal activities have been widely reported, but their exploitation as potential antiviral agents have yet to be fully investigated. In the present study, the antiviral activity of the peptide derived from the secretion of Rana tagoi, named AR-23, was evaluated against both DNA and RNA viruses, with or without envelope. Different assays were performed to identify in which step of the infectious cycle the peptide could act. AR-23 exhibited a greater inhibitory activity in the early stages of infection against both DNA (HSV-1) and RNA (MeV, HPIV-2, HCoV-229E, and SARS-CoV-2) enveloped viruses and, on the contrary, it was inactive against naked viruses (PV-1). Altogether, the results indicated AR-23 as a peptide with potential therapeutic effects against a wide variety of human viruses.
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