Health & Medicine
New Flu Treatments Target Immune Response, Not the Virus
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Jul 21, 2014 11:56 AM EDT
The severity of a disease is often not determined by the virus itself. More so, the outcome will result from the strength of the immune system's response. Turning down that response rather than attacking the virus could help to reduce the severity of certain health issues, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle.
"We set out to characterize the response to the severe disease-causing H7N9 virus and compare it to responses elicited by other serious flu viruses in a mouse model of infection," said lead study author Juliet Morrison of the university, in a news release. That work involved determining which genes are turned on by this infection.
"We have found that viruses that cause severe illness, like H7N9 and the infamous 1918 virus, trigger gene expression signatures that are different from the signatures seen in milder infections," added coauthor and University of Washington colleague Michael Katze, in whose laboratory the work was performed. "Importantly, we can exploit these signatures for antiviral drug discovery."
For the study, researchers used a computation approach to identify potential therapeutic drugs. They searched databases that contain gene expression profiles of cultured human cells that had been treated with different drugs to better determine how to reverse expression created by the H7N9 flu virus.
"Six of these drugs are FDA approved and could potentially be repurposed as H7N9 influenza therapeutics," added Morrison. "I believe that computational biology represents an exciting new way to study viruses and to discover drugs to fight them."
With future studies, researchers said they hope to better understand the severity of influenza and how to help investigators identify potential therapeutics aimed at lowering immune response.
More information regarding the findings can be seen via the Journal of Virology.
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First Posted: Jul 21, 2014 11:56 AM EDT
The severity of a disease is often not determined by the virus itself. More so, the outcome will result from the strength of the immune system's response. Turning down that response rather than attacking the virus could help to reduce the severity of certain health issues, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle.
"We set out to characterize the response to the severe disease-causing H7N9 virus and compare it to responses elicited by other serious flu viruses in a mouse model of infection," said lead study author Juliet Morrison of the university, in a news release. That work involved determining which genes are turned on by this infection.
"We have found that viruses that cause severe illness, like H7N9 and the infamous 1918 virus, trigger gene expression signatures that are different from the signatures seen in milder infections," added coauthor and University of Washington colleague Michael Katze, in whose laboratory the work was performed. "Importantly, we can exploit these signatures for antiviral drug discovery."
For the study, researchers used a computation approach to identify potential therapeutic drugs. They searched databases that contain gene expression profiles of cultured human cells that had been treated with different drugs to better determine how to reverse expression created by the H7N9 flu virus.
"Six of these drugs are FDA approved and could potentially be repurposed as H7N9 influenza therapeutics," added Morrison. "I believe that computational biology represents an exciting new way to study viruses and to discover drugs to fight them."
With future studies, researchers said they hope to better understand the severity of influenza and how to help investigators identify potential therapeutics aimed at lowering immune response.
More information regarding the findings can be seen via the Journal of Virology.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone