Potent Inhibition of Zika Virus Replication by Aurintricarboxylic Acid

In this study, we evaluated ATA as a potential antiviral drug against ZIKV replication. The antiviral activity of ATA against ZIKV replication in vitro showed median inhibitory concentrations (IC50) of 13.87 ± 1.09 μM and 33.33 ± 1.13 μM in Vero and A549 cells, respectively; without showing any cytotoxic effect in both cell lines (median cytotoxic concentration (CC50)> 1,000 μM). Moreover, ATA protected both cell types from ZIKV-induced cytopathic effect (CPE) and apoptosis in a time- and concentration-dependent manner. In addition, pre-treatment of Vero cells with ATA for up to 72 h also resulted in effective suppression of ZIKV replication with similar IC50. Importantly, the inhibitory effect of ATA on ZIKV infection was effective against strains of the African and Asian/American lineages, indicating that this inhibitory effect was not strain dependent. Overall, these results demonstrate that ATA has potent inhibitory activity against ZIKV replication and may be considered as a potential anti-ZIKV therapy for future clinical evaluation. Introduction Zika virus (ZIKV) belongs to the genus Flavivirus within the Flaviviridae family. ZIKV is an enveloped positive sense single-stranded RNA virus with a genome size of ∼10.7 kb that encodes a single polyprotein, which is post-translationally processed by cellular and viral proteases into three structural (capsid, C; pre-membrane, prM; and envelope, E) and seven non-structural (NS1,...
Source: Frontiers in Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Source Type: research