An international team has found a trial drug that effectively blocks the cellular door SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect its hosts.
www.sciencedaily.com
This is a trial of a novel idea. Intriguing.
Ok, the virus particle has an S protein, which is the lumpy poking out bits all over it, seen here:
It's like a key.
Those bits stick to a blob of protein on our cells surfaces, known as ACE2. That's like the corresponding padlock.
The idea is to flood the body with lots of ACE2, so that the virus gets locked up bound to that instead. This would create particle complexes in the tissue fluid, which might be variable sized depending on how many virions stick to one molecule of the ACE2. As long as they are stuck there, they cannot enter our cells.
This is called a decoy receptor therapy.
It is clever, but this is most likely
not going to work outside of the test tube.
ACE2 isn't an inert substance, it does stuff. If we flood our bloodstream with it, it will relentlessly start its biochemical work. Like putting out a wood fire by offering it gasoline to burn instead of the wood.
If we give inadequate doses, the virus will still operate.
We would have to, somehow, pick the perfect amount to prevent either failure or toxicity. Or give modest dosages to suppress virus activity till immunity kicks in. But that brings in other issues too.
What happens to the clumps of virus when our immuneglobulin starts to stick to that? It is one thing to aggregate around one virion at a time. Quite another to get big chunks of Ig attached to crowds of virions - the size of those complexes will be an issue, and can cause membrane problems like immune complex deposition diseases.
If they can bypass that problem, it could be safe enough to go to trial. How? Well, we might have to modify the ACE2 substance so that it doesn't have biochemical activity in humans, but still binds to the virus for starters. And it needs to only bind to one or 2 virions at a time. Theoretically, doable.