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The Professor of Parasitology of CEU San Pablo Dr. Carmen del Águila and the Ramón y Cajal researcher of the University, Dr. Rubén Agudo have co-directed a work for the development of a methodology to fight against Zika virus. Despite this is a serious problem of public health worldwide there is yet no commercial drug to neutralize the virus. For this reason, in researchers’ opinion it is “very important to streamline the search of new components”.
A methodology that can change the course of the fight against several viral diseases.
Their methodology is based on the binding of a fluorescent dye together with nucleic acids. This way it measures in real time the capacity of the main protein involved in the multiplication of the virus, the viral polymerase, to synthetize new nucleic acid chains that compose genetic material. Moreover, researchers mention that other methods are much more expensive and slow. However, their proposal is cheap, quick and easy to implement.
As they say, “the inhibiting effect of drugs acting against viral polymerase will be seen in the reduction of fluorescence as there will be less chains synthetizing. This allows, in a quick and efficient manner, to filter many drugs for their antiviral activity”.
Moreover they have revealed that this methodology can be adapted to polymerase causing other viral diseases. This is the case of Hepatitis C or of the foot and mouth disease. Thus it will not only be useful to develop therapies against Zika but also against dengue or Occidental Nile fever and will serve to improve antiviral drugs.
In the research team of Dr del Águila and Dr. Agudo, Yanira Sáez trainee researcher of the Faculty of Pharmacy has also taken part as well as the Director of the Regional Centre of Biomedical Investigations of Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, Dr. Armando Arias.
CEU Universities are committed to research as basis of academic excellence developing projects throughout the year. For this reason, CEU San Pablo has several research groups in the area of Biomedical Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts and in the Polytechnic Area.
