A curious paper has been published overnight from an Italian research team.
It proposes a therapeutic target for the treatment of corona viruses (including SARS-CoV-2) may be found in the regulation of m6A methylation. Specifically - inhibition of the FTO protein.
https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8247/14/11/1135/pdfThe team measured the levels of m6a found in healthy/infected/inhibited cells, and also the level of viral inhibition. They found that m6A levels were decreased in infected cells (CTRL-) and used the compound 'Rhein' to inhibit FTO, thereby boosting the amount of m6A in the cells.
This had the effect of increasing anti-viral inhibition. At 200 μg/mL the infection was 100% inhibited.
I would assume that 200 μg/mL may cause some unwanted toxicities in humans. I also don't have the expertise to interchange the IC50s for Rhein and Zantrene to determine the dose required to replicate these results. (I don't have the background to determine the reliability of this paper or the methods used - I'll leave that to
@RaceOncology and
@Mason14 if they wish to give their thoughts)
This paper reinforces that FTO specific epigenetic discoveries are still happening further afield than oncology. It's nice to see FTO being investigated in Europe too. To have pre-clinical results that suggest FTO inhibition may be therapeutic for not just COVID, but common corona viruses as well, is crazy to me. We talk about the Race iceburg but I think we'll find the FTO/m6A iceberg to be even larger.
Will RAC pursue this? Almost certainly not. But I'd bet Big Pharma would want a crack at it. They'll just need to pick up a FTO inhibitor for a few Billion
