A Small Molecule That In Vitro Neutralizes Infection of SARS-CoV-2 and Its Most Infectious Variants, Delta, and Omicron.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgent need to develop highly potent and safe medications that are complementary to the role of vaccines. Specifically, it has exhibited the need for orally bioavailable broad-spectrum antivirals that are able to be quickly deployed against newly emerging viral pathogens. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) and its variants Delta and Omicron are still a major threat to patients of all ages.

A NanoBiT assay to monitor membrane proteins trafficking for drug discovery and drug development.

Internalization of membrane proteins plays a key role in many physiological functions; however, highly sensitive and versatile technologies are lacking to study such processes in real-time living systems. Here we describe an assay based on bioluminescence able to quantify membrane receptor trafficking for a wide variety of internalization mechanisms such as GPCR internalization/recycling, antibody-mediated internalization, and SARS-CoV2 viral infection. This study represents an alternative drug discovery tool to accelerate the drug development for a wide range of physiological processes, such as cancer, neurological, cardiopulmonary, metabolic, and infectious diseases including COVID-19.