Computer-designed proteins can be programmed to disarm a variety of flu viruses.
Researchers have demonstrated that proteins found in nature that do not normally bind to flu viruses can be engineered to act as broad-spectrum antiviral agents against a variety of flu virus strains, including the H1N1 pandemic influenza.
David Baker, professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, reported in Nature Biotechnology, that his team had constructed proteins using computer modeling to fit exquisitely into a specific nano-sized target on flu viruses.
By binding the target region like a key into a lock, they keep the virus from changing shape, a tactic that the virus uses to infect living cells. The research efforts, akin to docking a space station but on a molecular level, are made possible by computers that can describe the landscapes of forces involved on the submicroscopic scale.
Baker and his team wanted to create antivirals that could react against a wide variety of H subtypes, as this versatility could lead to a comprehensive therapy for influenza.
Specifically, viruses that have hemagglutinins of the H2 subtype are responsible for the deadly pandemic of 1957 and continued to circulate until 1968. People born after that date haven't been exposed to H2 viruses.
The recent avian flu has a new version of H1 hemagglutinin. Data suggests that Baker's proteins bind to all types of the Group I Hemagglutinin, a group that includes not just H1 but the pandemic H2 and avian H5 strains.
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