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

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is . https://doi. org/10.1101 org/10. /2020 The non-ionised form of caprylic acid dissociates at basic pH into the ionized form and only the non-ionised form is capable of virus inactivation (Lundblad and Seng, 1991) . ViroSAL has optimal activity at pH5.5 and is consequently suitable for use in environments close to this pH, such as skin, oral cavity and mucous membranes which are also relevant portals of infection. The present study demonstrated that ViroSAL has antiviral activity against HSV-1, EBV and orf viruses, all of which are pathogens of skin or mucous membranes and have a tropism for epithelial cells. Since ViroSAL has optimal activity at pH5.5, we also tested a range of epithelial cell systems that would physiologically have a lower pH than that of plasma, such as skin which has a pH of approximately 5 (Lambers et al., 2006) and the oral cavity which can have a pH of 6.5 or lower depending on the level of oral health. ViroSAL had strong antiviral activity against Semliki Forest and Zika viruses, which are transmitted via mosquitoes into the skin dermis. This is an important stage of the virus life cycle, in which it replicates in dermal cells before disseminating to the blood and then throughout the body (Hamel et al., 2015; Pingen et al., 2017) .