Key result
Fluorescent cell-based screening identifies several compounds that inhibit human metapneumovirus replication.
Why the study?
There are no licensed vaccines or drugs for human metapneumovirus, necessitating development of assays to identify potential antiviral inhibitors.
The development of a validated medium-throughput screening assay for human metapneumovirus enables the discovery of new antivirals and biological probes.
Human metapneumovirus, a paramyxovirus discovered in 2001, is a major cause of lower respiratory infection in adults and children worldwide. There are no licensed vaccines or drugs for human metapneumovirus. We developed a fluorescent, cell-based medium-throughput screening assay for human metapneumovirus that captures inhibitors of all stages of the viral lifecycle except budding of progeny virus particles from the cell membrane. We optimized and validated the assay and performed a successful medium-throughput screening. A number of hits were identified, several of which were confirmed to inhibit viral replication in secondary assays. This assay offers potential to discover new antivirals for human metapneumovirus and related respiratory viruses. Compounds discovered using the medium-throughput screening may also provide useful probes of viral biology.
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Becker et al. (2019) studied Human metapneumovirus infection. Fluorescent, cell-based medium-throughput screening assay was evaluated on Identification of viral replication inhibitors. A fluorescent, cell-based medium-throughput screening assay successfully identified several compounds that inhibit human metapneumovirus replication.
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