Cell-Based Screens Detect Drugs Active Against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome

I’ve heard of the MERS virus before --- the drugs that I heard of first that inhibit was in the June 2, ’14, page 24 of C&EN. Namely chloroqine (an antimalarial) and chlorpromazine (an antipsychotic drug). The article, Early Hits for MERS Inhibitors’ described that the drugs inhibit endocytosis, which I thought was pretty interesting. And clever too. Liked the described mechanism. I don’t know about the last drug but the first one that can be used for malaria might be expensive. Which would limit its use, which would not help as many folks as one might hope. There is another material, butylhydroxytoluene or \BHT, that has been known since the late 6os to disrupt the viral coat of some viruses thereby reducing the infectiveness of a virus particle. The key to this is the ratio of lips or fatty materials to proteins in the viral coat or shell. With those viral types having more lipids in their viral coats being more susceptible to disruption (for lack of a better word) than those that have viral coats that are more protein based. An example of a susceptible virus is the one that causes Herpes and one that is not susceptible is Polio. The starting dose is something like 50 mg or so and is taken neat and orally --- a glass of water? The number of times that the dose is given depends on the virus --- they come in crops and that is when you want to take the dose. Some of the viruses that cause intestinal problems and are susceptible ‘crop’ every 2 to 4 hours depending on the virus --- the ‘cropping’ can be guessed at when the person has to head of to the toilet. It is my understanding that BHT is effective for about 2/3 of all human infective viruses. Food quality BHT can often be gotten through your local butcher or meat packer as BHT has been used (I think) since the early 50s as a food preservative for potted foods such as hot dogs and salami (again, I think). Hope this helps.