A sweet discovery raises hope for treating Ebola, Lassa, Marburg and other fast-acting viruses
Wednesday, November 3, 2010 - 15:00
in Biology & Nature
When a team of European researchers sought to discover how a class of antiviral drugs worked, they looked in an unlikely place: the sugar dish. A new research report appearing in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org) suggests that a purified and modified form of a simple sugar chain may stop fast-acting and deadly viruses, such as Ebola, Lassa, or Marburg viruses, in their tracks. This compound, called chlorite-oxidised oxyamylose or COAM, could be a very attractive therapeutic option because not only did this compound enhance the early-stage immune defences in mice, but because of sugar's abundance, it is derived from easily obtainable sources...