Several enveloped viruses, particularly some RNA viruses, have high rates of mutation or replication, which can make them virulent pathogens in humans and other mammals. A proposed treatment could use synthesized proteins to mask pathogenic viral surface proteins to quickly induce an immune attack on specific enveloped viruses by using existing immune cells. One treatment could inject dual-protein ligand masks into patients' bloodstreams to mask pathogenic surface proteins used to infect mammalian cells. The mammalian immune system already uses an analogous, more complex structure called a pentraxin to neutralize some pathogens by connecting their surface proteins to immune cells. And several types of antiviral peptides have already experimentally demonstrated effectiveness in blocking various viral pathogen infections. These treatments offer advantages, especially for currently untreatable viral pathogens. Furthermore, using dual-protein ligands and the antigenic memory of some sub-populations of NK cells would also allow the creation of defacto vaccines based on a host's NK cells, instead of vaccines utilizing CD4 and CD8 α:β T cells, which are limited by the requirement of MHC presentation of the target antigens to α:β T cells. Targeted NK cell vaccines could attack host cells latently or actively infected by intracellular pathogens, even host cells having pathogen downregulated MHC antigen presentation. Eight postulates concerning the effects of pathogen mutation, or change in phenotype from genetic recombination or rearrangement, and replication rates on pathogen vs host dominance are also listed, which should be applicable to viral and non-viral pathogens.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/sji.12928 | DOI Listing |
J Infect Dev Ctries
December 2024
Internal Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
Introduction: The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of ivermectin and colchicine as treatment options for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Methodology: A three-arm randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted in the Triage Clinic of the family medicine department at Ain Shams University Hospitals on participants who had been diagnosed with moderate COVID-19. Patients aged < 18 years or > 65 years, with any co-morbidities, pregnant or lactating females, and those with mild or severe COVID-19 confirmed cases were excluded.
Virus Res
January 2025
Medical Research Center, Yuebei People's Hospital, Shantou University Medical College, 512025, Shaoguan, China; Shenzhen Immuthy Biotech Co., Ltd, 518107, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. Electronic address:
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) represents one of the major pathogenic factor that leads to chronic liver diseases and the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The currently approved anti-HBV drugs cannot eradicate the virus or block the development of HCC. HBV nucleocapsid consists of the hepatitis B core antigen (HBcAg) and the HBV relaxed-circular partially double-stranded DNA (rcDNA), indispensable in virus replication.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrob Pathog
January 2025
Department of Bioengineering, Faculty of engineering, Integral University, Lucknow-226026, India. Electronic address:
Globally, over 768 million confirmed cases and 6.9 million deaths had been documented as of July 17, 2023. Coronaviruses have a relatively large RNA genome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFViruses
January 2025
Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, College of Veterinary Medicine, Chungnam National University, Daejeon 34134, Republic of Korea.
Self-assembling ferritin nanoparticle technology is a widely used vaccine development platform for enhancing the efficacy of subunit vaccines by displaying multiple antigens on nanocages. The dengue virus (DENV) envelope domain III (EDIII) protein, the most promising antigen for DENV, has been applied in vaccine development, and it is essential to evaluate the relative immunogenicity of the EDIII protein and EDIII-conjugated ferritin to show the efficiency of the ferritin delivery system compared with EDIII. In this study, we optimized the conditions for the expression of the EDIII protein in , protein purification, and refolding, and these optimization techniques were applied for the purification of EDIII ferritin nanoparticles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFViruses
January 2025
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19102, USA.
Microvirin is a lectin molecule known to have monovalent interaction with glycoprotein gp120. A previously reported high-resolution structural analysis defines the mannobiose-binding cavity of Microvirin. Nonetheless, structure does not directly define the energetics of binding contributions of protein contact residues.
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