A novel antiviral formulation inhibits a range of enveloped viruses.

Nicola F Fletcher; Luke W Meredith; Emma L Tidswell; Steven R Bryden; Daniel Gonçalves-Carneiro; Yasmin Chaudhry; Claire Shannon-Lowe; Michael A Folan; Daniella A Lefteri; Marieke Pingen; Dalan Bailey; Clive S McKimmie; Alan W Baird

To assess the ability of ViroSAL to inhibit viral infection, we utilized a pseudovirus system, which allows high throughput assays to assess viral entry to cells. ViroSAL inhibited entry of viral pseudoparticles bearing the envelope glycoproteins of VSV, Lassa, Ebola and SARS-CoV-1 viruses. Pseudoviral particles mirror the entry pathways of their respective wild type viruses and use the same viral receptors and entry pathways (for review, see (Li et al., 2018) ). These constructs generate high titre pseudoviruses that can be used to infect a range of cell types. Inhibition of pseudovirus entry by ViroSAL occurred in a concentration-dependent manner, when pseudoviruses were incubated with ViroSAL for 2 minutes ( Figure 1A) . Treatment of pseudoviruses with 2% ViroSAL resulted in complete neutralization of pseudovirus infectivity on 293T human embryonic kidney cells ( Figure 1A ). There was no alteration in cellular proliferation or cytotoxicity when cells were treated with pseudovirus or ViroSAL, assessed using an MTT assay (data not shown). ViroSAL is stable at pH5.5, so pseudovirus treatment was carried out at pH5.5 and then restored to pH7 before the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.