Artificial enzymes may help ‘kill’ Covid: Study

PTI

London, November 17

Scientists have developed artificial enzymes programmed to target the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 and destroy the virus, an advance that may lead to a new generation of antiviral drugs for Covid-19 and its variants.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrated the use of this technology to successfully ‘kill’ live SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Alex Taylor teamed up with Nicholas Matheson to show that these XNAzymes were active against live SARS-CoV-2 virus.

SARS-CoV-2 has the ability to evolve and change its genetic code, leading to new variants against which vaccines are less effective.

To counter this, Taylor not only targeted regions of the viral RNA that mutate less frequently, but also designed three of the XNAzymes to self-assemble into a ‘nanostructure’ that cuts different parts of the virus genome.