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Crispr: next virus killer? + New promise for universal blood transfusions + Arbidol

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Ross Pomeroy: Doctors in Wuhan have aggressively treated patients with antivirals not approved in the U.S. [for coronavirus]. The drug they utilized most often was Arbidol, manufactured by the Russian company JSC Pharmstandard. One preliminary study showed that Arbidol could drastically improve chest CT scans and speed the body's clearing of the virus, perhaps by inhibiting viral replication. The antiviral drug Favipiravir, approved in Japan and China, could be more efficacious than Arbidol according to a sizable randomized clinical trial yet to be peer reviewed. While these early studies are promising, neither of these drugs should be regarded as effective until additional research is performed. Given COVID-19's swift expansion, there should be plenty of opportunities to explore their potential. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/.../all.14289



New promise for universal blood transfusions
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/new-p...ansfusions

EXCERPT: Scientists have created a “stealth” red blood cell that camouflages its immune status, meaning it could potentially be transfused into anybody in an emergency, regardless of their blood type. The finding, published in Science Advances, promises to shake up my own former field of emergency medicine, where treating people who have lost litres of blood from shootings, stabbings and road trauma is all in a day’s work.

[...] Enter a team of researchers led by Ben Wang at Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China. ... They ran the stealth cells through a battery of tests that suggests they achieved goal fulfilment.

First, they tested whether the engineered cells were made more fragile and likely to break. They weren’t. Then they checked whether the cells were still able to clot. They were. But they also wanted to make sure the cells were not more viscous than normal red cells. That would make them prone to clot excessively, causing problems like deep venous thrombosis (DVT). The stealth red cells’ viscosity profile was healthy. Perhaps most importantly, Wang’s group ran the robo red cell through its oxygen-carrying paces and found that it took up and delivered oxygen with almost precisely the same dynamics as a real cell.

For ultimate proof of purpose, they drained mice of ten per cent of their blood volume, then resuscitated them with stealth red cells. It worked. The mice survived and so did the red cells, which hung around in the critters for around 40 days, comparable to normal red cells... (MORE - details)



Could Crispr be humanity's next virus killer?
https://www.wired.com/story/could-crispr...us-killer/

INTRO: On February 19, Tim Abbott, a PhD candidate at Stanford University’s Bioengineering Department, checked the results of an experiment that he was running as a part of a team using the gene-manipulating Crispr technology to fight coronavirus. Abbott was working out of the lab of Stanley Qi, a pioneer developing Crispr tools that can mess with cancer cells and the like to fight diseases. Using an approach the lab called PAC-MAN (Prophylactic Antiviral Crispr in huMAN cells), the idea was to attack the coronavirus by directing a Crispr torpedo at it, attacking the virus’s genetic makeup that allows it to penetrate human cells and then use the cell’s machinery to self-replicate.

In this particular experiment, he had introduced the lab’s Crispr-based system for finding and destroying SARS-Cov 2 (what scientists call the new coronavirus) into a solution containing an inert synthesized fragment of that virus. Like all Crispr systems, this one was composed of two parts: an enzyme and a strand of so-called "guide RNA." The RNA directs the enzyme, in this case, Cas-13d, to latch onto specific spots in the coronavirus's genome where it then makes a series of cuts. You can think of it like a pair of scissors programmed to scan a cookbook and chop up only the page containing the recipe for SARS-Cov-2.

After Abbott analyzed the data, he called over Marie La Russa, a research scientist managing the project, to verify what he’d seen. The coronavirus-targeted Crispr had reduced the amount of virus in the solution by 90 percent. If effectively delivered, this kill rate, they theorized, might be enough to stop the disease in a human.

That result, along with others included in a paper released last weekend—in preprint form and not yet peer-reviewed—suggests that we may be entering an era of developing new Crispr-based weapons against deadly viruses, from flus to coronaviruses. “The PAC-MAN approach,” the authors wrote, “is potentially a rapidly implementable pan-coronavirus strategy to deal with emerging pandemic strains.”

But before you spring from your isolation-in-place for a cheer, underline “potentially.” As the Stanford team readily admits, their paper is more a blueprint, or proof of concept, than an actual medical treatment ready for testing in animals or humans. The project has some serious X-factors, including the fact that they weren’t able to test PAC-MAN on the actual coronavirus. They still haven’t developed a system to get it into human cells. And, as Fyodor Urnov, a professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, points out, even if it works, there’s still a long horizon between preprint and clinical testing. “There is, frankly, zero chance that this approach can be tested in humans in the next four to six months,” says Urnov. “By analogy, if we were trying to go to the moon and come back safely, what this work shows is one can build a rocket that achieves escape velocity.”

No, it’s not a quick fix, but working on moon shots isn’t a bad idea... (MORE - details, problems to overcome)
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