Scientists Get A Peek Into Flu Virus Defenses
A detailed understanding of the tunnel-and-gate mechanism, called an ion-channel protein, could lead to new drugs that could block the reproduction of
flu viruses inside host cells, the researchers said.
Some 500,000 people around the world die every year from seasonal Influenza A virus, which mutates slightly from one year to the next.
A virus is a sub-microscopic pathogen that can only reproduce inside a host cell. It is composed of discrete viral particles, each with its own RNA, called virions. Like DNA, RNA contains genetic code transferred during reproduction.
When a virion enters the lungs of a bird, a horse or a human, its membrane fuses with material inside a host cell.
Triggered by the acidic low pH of the cell’s interior, the virion’s RNA enters its host and begins to multiple, wreaking havoc in the process, and provoking the symptoms associated with influenza.
But this mechanism only works if the acidic milieu outside the virus membrance first “leaks” into the virion through the ion-channel, also known simply as M2.
Two anti-flu drugs — amantadine, sold as Symmetrel, and rimantadine, sold under the brand Flumadine — were designed to block this process, but over the last 10 years the Influenza A virus has developed a 90 percent resistance to both medications, the studies say.
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