Drug May Cure Any Viral Infection
The State Column | Staff | Friday, August 12, 2011
A team of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) claim to have developed a drug that can cure everything, from common colds to HIV and almost everything in between. They call the drug DRACO, for short.
DRACO is designed to recognize infected cells and make them self-destruct. In doing so, it has proven to be effective against human rhinoviruses, flu, polio, and dengue fever. Rhinoviruses are viruses that cause most of the common colds in adults and children and the stomach bug.
Also, there have been reports of drug showing signs of success against German measles, cold sores, rabies, and potentially HIV. Continued experiments are needed for confirmation, but we could potentially see this drug hit the shelves as early as a decade.
DRACO is designed to recognize infected cells and make them self-destruct. In doing so, it has proven to be effective against human rhinoviruses, flu, polio, and dengue fever. Rhinoviruses are viruses that cause most of the common colds in adults and children and the stomach bug.
From the Money Control, the lead researcher Mike Rider (sic Todd Rider) said, “It’s certainly possible that there’s some virus that we aren’t able to treat but we haven’t found it yet.”
It is hoped that this drug will be equivalent of antibodies against bacterial infections, but instead against viral infections. At the moment, there are not too many anti-viral treatments, so this represents a potential great step forward in medical treatments.
In the lab, DRACO has been shown to kill 15 different viruses, and have helped mice survive, after being injected with a dose of the flu that should have killed them.
During a viral infection, the virus invades the human cell and begins to replicate its DNA or RNA for replication. To fight this invasion, the body naturally produces proteins to hinder and stop this replication from occurring. Thus the researchers combined a protein that binds to the RNA with another that triggers cell death. Thus the treatment only targets the infected cells and leaves the healthy cells alone.
Potentially, this drug could be taken before symptoms appear, thus eliminating any feelings of fatigue or other symptoms. It could prevent people from ever feeling sick.
In essence this new drug could be the new penicillin of this century.
This study was published in journal PLoS One.
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