Scientists at IIT-Roorkee have found that a commonly used deworming drug has anti-viral properties and could lead to new therapies against Chikungunya – a deadly, mosquito-borne disease.<\/p>\n
Currently, there are no vaccines or antiviral drugs available to cure Chikungunya, and the treatment is focussed on relieving the symptoms associated with the infection.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur research has shown that piperazine, a drug existing in the market, is successful in curbing the spread and replication of the Chikungunya virus in a lab setting,\u201d said Shailly Tomar, a professor at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee in Uttarakhand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently testing the molecule on animals and hope to take this to clinical trials soon,\u201d said Tomar, who headed the research project.<\/p>\n
Piperazine is a drug commonly used in deworming treatments against roundworm and pinworm.<\/p>\n
Scientists, using their expertise in virology and structure biology, discovered antiviral potential of piperazine and determined the mechanism of inhibition of Chikungunya virus.<\/p>\n
The molecular details revealed in the study can be further utilised to design piperazine derivative drugs that are more potent and aggressive to fight Chikungunya virus, Tomar said.<\/p>\n
The study, published in the journal Antiviral Research, describes the potential of piperazine as a pharmacotherapeutic agent, and how binding these molecules to the hydrophobic (water-hating) pocket of capsid protein present in the Chikungunya virus can inhibit the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n
Using X-ray crystallographic technique in combination with computational biology and fluorescence techniques, the researchers found that piperazine binds itself well with the hydrophobic pocket on the alphavirus capsid protein.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis pocket is key to the replication of the virus and its spread inside a host. Inhibiting the pocket prevents budding and spread of the virus and can help in treating the virus effectively using existing drugs,\u201d Tomar said.<\/p>\n
\u201cChikungunya is becoming a major public health concern with many people being affected by it year after year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scientists at IIT-Roorkee have found that a commonly used deworming drug has anti-viral properties and could lead to new therapies against Chikungunya – a deadly, mosquito-borne disease. Currently, there are no vaccines or antiviral drugs available to cure Chikungunya, and the treatment is focussed on relieving the symptoms associated with the infection. \u201cOur research has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7035,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7033\/revisions\/7035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}