Why the study?
Enterovirus outbreaks affect millions worldwide, but there are currently no FDA-approved antiviral therapeutics.
Novel antiviral compounds targeting the enterovirus 2C protein show promising in vitro efficacy and could serve as probes for understanding viral assembly.
Novel enterovirus antivirals identified in vitro; hypothesis-generating and should not yet change practice.
The Enterovirus (EV) genus includes several important human and animal pathogens. EV‐A71, EV‐D68, poliovirus (PV), and coxsackievirus (CV) outbreaks have affected millions worldwide, causing a range of upper respiratory, skin, and neuromuscular diseases, including acute flaccid myelitis, and hand‐foot‐and‐mouth disease. There are no FDA‐approved antiviral therapeutics for these enteroviruses. This study describes novel antiviral compounds targeting the conserved non‐structural viral protein 2C with low micromolar to nanomolar IC 50 values. The selection of resistant mutants resulted in amino acid substitutions in the viral capsid protein, implying these compounds may play a role in inhibiting the interaction of 2C and the capsid protein. The assembly and encapsidation stages of the viral life cycle still need to be fully understood, and the inhibitors reported here could be useful probes in understanding these processes.
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Kejriwal et al. (2023) studied this question.
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