A breakthrough seems to have been made in the coronavirus research. A team of international researchers has found the potential Achilles heel of the coronavirus. “It is an enzyme that appears to be essential for the spread of the virus in the body,” the LUMC announced on Thursday. The study, to which LUMC researchers made a significant contribution, has been published in Nature.
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PLpro
‘It is a so-called papain-like protease, or PLpro. This is an enzyme essential for processing viral proteins and forming new virus particles in human cells. But that is not everything. It also reduces the human immune response to the virus, making it easier for the virus to run its course, “said the LUMC.
Two birds with one stone
The researchers saw a decrease in virus spread and an increasing immune response targeting the virus after adding an inhibitor of the enzyme to infected epithelial cells in the laboratory. “Our results offer the promising opportunity for a ‘two birds with one stone’ therapy: stopping virus spreading while simultaneously strengthening the human immune system,” said Ivan Đikić, research leader from Goethe University in Frankfurt.
Getting to know the protein
Within the LUMC, researchers from the Department of Cell and Chemical Biology contributed to this discovery. Assistant professor Gerbrand van der Heden van Noort: ‘We have supplied reagents that have played a crucial role in the study of this essential coronavirus enzyme. We copy small proteins and can also make small changes to these proteins, so that they trigger a certain signal. The PLpro enzyme studied interacts with our chemically made proteins, which enables us to learn exactly how this SARS-CoV-2 enzyme works, what its role is in infection and how we can inhibit it. ‘
Cooperation
Manufacturing such specialist pieces of molecular tools is far from easy. There are only a handful of research groups in the world capable of making this. The research was a collaboration between researchers from the Institute of Biochemistry at Goethe University in Frankfurt and other research groups from Germany and therefore also from Leiden.
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