Infection with the influenza virus leads to lung injury through inflammation over-activation, causing collateral damage to cells required for breathing that can threaten life. However, a scientific team successfully found a new drug that can prevent flu-related lung injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After doing a series of experiment mouse models, scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital<\/a>, University of Houston, Tufts University School of Medicine, and Fox Chase Cancer Center have created a new drug, called UH15-38, which not only prevents runaway inflammation but also allows the immune system to handle the virus, even when late infection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Findings show that the drug protected mouse models from similar amounts of influenza that humans experience at low doses. With a high drug dose, animals could be protected from an infection with a substantial amount of virus, which would usually lead to death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, it is also recorded as a notable achievement for an influenza therapeutic because the models were protected even if they received the dose 5 days later after the first infection while modern antiviral drugs need to be used within the first few days of infection to be effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new drug inhibited one part of a major inflammation protein in immune cells, known as Receptor-Interacting Protein Kinase 3 (RIPK3), which controls two cell death pathways in response to infection: apoptosis and necroptosis. In that, necroptosis is highly inflammatory and apoptosis is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Designed to prevent RIPK3 from starting necroptosis while maintaining its pro-apoptotic properties, UH15-38 helps the animals do better when just necroptosis is knocked out while still having apoptosis, meaning still gets rid of infected cells but it isn’t as inflammatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only that, the team also found a specific set of cells in the lung that are collateral damage in the runaway inflammatory response through many prior studies. These cells, Type 1 alveolar epithelial cells, respond to let oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. As so, the loss of these cells leads to a lack of ability to breathe. The study also proved that this group of breath-taking cells was spared in the presence of UH15-38. The drug makes it a promising candidate to move forward toward the clinic as it can dampen influenza-caused inflammation while leaving viral clearance and the other functions of the immune and tissue responses intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article Source: Science Daily<\/a> Infection with the influenza virus leads to lung injury through inflammation over-activation, causing collateral damage to cells required for breathing that can threaten life. However, a scientific team successfully found a new drug that can prevent flu-related lung injury. After doing a series of experiment mouse models, scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, University […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58,1690],"tags":[1855,1856,1857,1858],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5725"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5728,"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5725\/revisions\/5728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.despatch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Image by Ralph<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"