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Chen Y, Li Y, Lu L, Zou P. Zafirlukast, as a viral inactivator, potently inhibits infection of several flaviviruses, including Zika virus, dengue virus, and yellow fever virus. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 2024:e0016824. [PMID: 38809067 DOI: 10.1128/aac.00168-24] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2024] [Accepted: 05/02/2024] [Indexed: 05/30/2024] Open
Abstract
Zika virus (ZIKV) is one of the mosquito-borne flaviviruses that exhibits a unique tropism to nervous systems and is associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome and congenital Zika syndrome (CZS). Dengue virus (DENV) and yellow fever virus (YFV), the other two mosquito-borne flaviviruses, have also been circulating for a long time and cause severe diseases, such as dengue hemorrhagic fever and yellow fever, respectively. However, there are no safe and effective antiviral drugs approved for the treatment of infections or coinfections of these flaviviruses. Here, we found that zafirlukast, a pregnancy-safe leukotriene receptor antagonist, exhibited potent antiviral activity against infections of ZIKV strains from different lineages in different cell lines, as well as against infections of DENV-2 and YFV 17D. Mechanistic studies demonstrated that zafirlukast directly and irreversibly inactivated these flaviviruses by disrupting the integrity of the virions, leading to the loss of viral infectivity, hence inhibiting the entry step of virus infection. Considering its efficacy against flaviviruses, its safety for pregnant women, and its neuroprotective effect, zafirlukast is a promising candidate for prophylaxis and treatment of infections or coinfections of ZIKV, DENV, and YFV, even in pregnant women.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yongkang Chen
- Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Yuan Li
- Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Lu Lu
- Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Peng Zou
- Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
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Chen Y, Li X, Han F, Ji B, Li Y, Yan J, Wang M, Fan J, Zhang S, Lu L, Zou P. The nucleoside analog 4'-fluorouridine suppresses the replication of multiple enteroviruses by targeting 3D polymerase. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 2024:e0005424. [PMID: 38687016 DOI: 10.1128/aac.00054-24] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2024] [Accepted: 04/05/2024] [Indexed: 05/02/2024] Open
Abstract
Human enteroviruses are the major pathogens causing hand-foot-and-mouth disease in infants and young children throughout the world, and infection with enterovirus is also associated with severe complications, such as aseptic meningitis and myocarditis. However, there are no antiviral drugs available to treat enteroviruses infection at present. In this study, we found that 4'-fluorouridine (4'-FlU), a nucleoside analog with low cytotoxicity, exhibited broad-spectrum activity against infections of multiple enteroviruses with EC50 values at low micromolar levels, including coxsackievirus A10 (CV-A10), CV-A16, CV-A6, CV-A7, CV-B3, enterovirus A71 (EV-A71), EV-A89, EV-D68, and echovirus 6. With further investigation, the results indicated that 4'-FlU directly interacted with the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase of enterovirus, the 3D pol, and impaired the polymerase activity of 3D pol, hence inhibiting viral RNA synthesis and significantly suppressing viral replication. Our findings suggest that 4'-FlU could be promisingly developed as a broad-spectrum direct-acting antiviral agent for anti-enteroviruses therapy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yongkang Chen
- Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences and Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Xiaohong Li
- Clinical Center for BioTherapy, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Fengyang Han
- Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Computational Chemical Genomics Screening Center, School of Pharmacy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Beihong Ji
- Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Computational Chemical Genomics Screening Center, School of Pharmacy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Yuan Li
- Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences and Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Jingjing Yan
- Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences and Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Min Wang
- Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences and Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Jun Fan
- Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences and Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Shuye Zhang
- Clinical Center for BioTherapy, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Lu Lu
- Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences and Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Peng Zou
- Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, School of Basic Medical Sciences and Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
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Sun Y, Li YY, Leung CK, Hu P. iNGNN-DTI: prediction of drug-target interaction with interpretable nested graph neural network and pretrained molecule models. Bioinformatics 2024; 40:btae135. [PMID: 38449285 PMCID: PMC10957515 DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btae135] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/23/2023] [Revised: 12/31/2023] [Accepted: 03/05/2024] [Indexed: 03/08/2024] Open
Abstract
MOTIVATION Drug-target interaction (DTI) prediction aims to identify interactions between drugs and protein targets. Deep learning can automatically learn discriminative features from drug and protein target representations for DTI prediction, but challenges remain, making it an open question. Existing approaches encode drugs and targets into features using deep learning models, but they often lack explanations for underlying interactions. Moreover, limited labeled DTIs in the chemical space can hinder model generalization. RESULTS We propose an interpretable nested graph neural network for DTI prediction (iNGNN-DTI) using pre-trained molecule and protein models. The analysis is conducted on graph data representing drugs and targets by using a specific type of nested graph neural network, in which the target graphs are created based on 3D structures using Alphafold2. This architecture is highly expressive in capturing substructures of the graph data. We use a cross-attention module to capture interaction information between the substructures of drugs and targets. To improve feature representations, we integrate features learned by models that are pre-trained on large unlabeled small molecule and protein datasets, respectively. We evaluate our model on three benchmark datasets, and it shows a consistent improvement on all baseline models in all datasets. We also run an experiment with previously unseen drugs or targets in the test set, and our model outperforms all of the baselines. Furthermore, the iNGNN-DTI can provide more insights into the interaction by visualizing the weights learned by the cross-attention module. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION The source code of the algorithm is available at https://github.com/syan1992/iNGNN-DTI.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yan Sun
- Department of Biochemistry, Western University, London, ON, N6G 2V4, Canada
- Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2N2, Canada
- Department of Computer Science, Western University, London, ON, N6G 2V4, Canada
| | - Yan Yi Li
- Division of Biostatistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5T 3M7, Canada
| | - Carson K Leung
- Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2N2, Canada
| | - Pingzhao Hu
- Department of Biochemistry, Western University, London, ON, N6G 2V4, Canada
- Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2N2, Canada
- Department of Computer Science, Western University, London, ON, N6G 2V4, Canada
- Division of Biostatistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5T 3M7, Canada
- Department of Oncology, Western University, London, ON, N6G 2V4, Canada
- Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Western University, London, ON, N6G 2V4, Canada
- The Children’s Health Research Institute, Lawson Health Research Institute, London, ON, N6A 4V2, Canada
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Chen Y, Li X, Wang M, Li Y, Fan J, Yan J, Zhang S, Lu L, Zou P. A cysteine protease inhibitor GC376 displays potent antiviral activity against coxsackievirus infection. CURRENT RESEARCH IN MICROBIAL SCIENCES 2023; 5:100203. [PMID: 37767059 PMCID: PMC10520345 DOI: 10.1016/j.crmicr.2023.100203] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Infection with coxsackievirus A10 (CV-A10) can cause hand-foot-mouth disease and is also associated with severe complications, including viral pneumonia, aseptic and viral meningitis. Coxsackievirus infection may also play a role in the pathogenesis of acute myocardial infarction and in the increased risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus in adults. However, there are no approved vaccines or direct antiviral agents available to prevention or treatment of coxsackievirus infection. Here, we reported that GC376 potently inhibited CV-A10 infection in different cell lines without cytotoxicity, significantly suppressed production of viral proteins, and strongly reduced the yields of infectious progeny virions. Further study indicated that GC376, as viral 3C protease inhibitor, had the potential to restrain the cleavage of the viral polyprotein into individually functional proteins, thus suppressed the replication of CV-A10. Furthermore, the drug exhibited antiviral activity against coxsackieviruses of various serotypes including CV-A6, CV-A7 and CV-A16, suggesting that GC376 is a broad-spectrum anti-coxsackievirus inhibitor and the 3C protease is a promising target for developing anti-coxsackievirus agents.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yongkang Chen
- Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Xiaohong Li
- Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Min Wang
- Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Yuan Li
- Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Jun Fan
- Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Jingjing Yan
- Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Shuye Zhang
- Clinical Center for BioTherapy and Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Lu Lu
- Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Peng Zou
- Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
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Liang J, Zheng M, Xu W, Chen Y, Tang P, Wu G, Zou P, Li H, Chen L. Acriflavine and proflavine hemisulfate as potential antivirals by targeting M pro. Bioorg Chem 2022; 129:106185. [PMID: 36240541 PMCID: PMC9540699 DOI: 10.1016/j.bioorg.2022.106185] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2022] [Revised: 09/18/2022] [Accepted: 09/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/02/2022]
Abstract
The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic buffets the world, and the concerted efforts are needed to explore effective drugs. Mpro is an intriguing antiviral target for interfering with viral RNA replication and transcription. In order to get potential anti-SARS-CoV-2 agents, we established an enzymatic assay using a fluorogenic substrate to screen the inhibitors of Mpro. Fortunately, Acriflavine (ACF) and Proflavine Hemisulfate (PRF) with the same acridine scaffold were picked out for their good inhibitory activity against Mpro with IC50 of 5.60 ± 0.29 μM and 2.07 ± 0.01 μM, respectively. Further evaluation of MST assay and enzymatic kinetics experiment in vitro showed that they had a certain affinity to SARS-CoV-2 Mpro and were both non-competitive inhibitors. In addition, they inhibited about 90 % HCoV-OC43 replication in BHK-21 cells at 1 μM. Both compounds showed nano-molar activities against SARS-CoV-2 virus, which were superior to GC376 for anti-HCoV-43, and equivalent to the standard molecule remdesivir. Our study demonstrated that ACF and PRF were inhibitors of Mpro, and ACF has been previously reported as a PLpro inhibitor. Taken together, ACF and PRF might be dual-targeted inhibitors to provide protection against infections of coronaviruses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jing Liang
- Wuya College of Innovation, Key Laboratory of Structure-Based Drug Design & Discovery, Ministry of Education, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China
| | - Mengzhu Zheng
- School of Pharmacy, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China
| | - Wei Xu
- Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
| | - Yongkang Chen
- Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology (MOE/NHC/CAMS), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
| | - Piyu Tang
- Wuya College of Innovation, Key Laboratory of Structure-Based Drug Design & Discovery, Ministry of Education, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China
| | - Guoyi Wu
- Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai 201508, China,Corresponding authors at: Wuya College of Innovation, Key Laboratory of Structure-Based Drug Design & Discovery, Ministry of Education, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China (H. Li and L. Chen)
| | - Peng Zou
- Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai 201508, China,Corresponding authors at: Wuya College of Innovation, Key Laboratory of Structure-Based Drug Design & Discovery, Ministry of Education, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China (H. Li and L. Chen)
| | - Hua Li
- Wuya College of Innovation, Key Laboratory of Structure-Based Drug Design & Discovery, Ministry of Education, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China,Institute of Structural Pharmacology & TCM Chemical Biology, College of Pharmacy, Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fuzhou 350122, China,School of Pharmacy, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China,Corresponding authors at: Wuya College of Innovation, Key Laboratory of Structure-Based Drug Design & Discovery, Ministry of Education, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China (H. Li and L. Chen)
| | - Lixia Chen
- Wuya College of Innovation, Key Laboratory of Structure-Based Drug Design & Discovery, Ministry of Education, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China,Corresponding authors at: Wuya College of Innovation, Key Laboratory of Structure-Based Drug Design & Discovery, Ministry of Education, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China (H. Li and L. Chen)
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