Researchers at UCSF may have uncovered a new way to approach the treatment of COVID-19.
They used CRISPR gene-editing technology to examine how the virus infects human cells.
The virus that causes COVID-19 needs that protein to infect human cells.
There are already drugs that can stop our bodies from producing that protein, called BRD2. It regulates the ACE2 receptor, which the coronavirus relies on to gain entry to its host's cells.
"A big attraction about targeting what we call a host factor for a virus – as in a factor that exists in human cells – is that human cells are not going to mutate and change the way that we are seeing with the virus, where...as omicron is the latest example of a variant...suddenly some of the previous therapies might not work the same way," said Dr. Martin Kampmann, associate professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF.
Kampmann, a senior author of the study, told KCBS Radio's "As Prescribed" on Thursday there are potential risks to this approach.
So more research is needed.
"I hope that this work provides a blueprint to rapidly identify for SARS-CoV-2, but also in general (for) other viruses, what are all the human host cell factors that the virus requires, and hopefully some of them will be therapeutic targets," he explained.
Scientists first used CRISPR technology less than a decade ago.
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