A general strategy to inhibiting viral -1 frameshifting based on upstream attenuation duplex formation

Hu, Hao-Teng; Cho, Che-Pei; Lin, Ya-Hui; Chang, Kung-Yao

Although nucleic acid-based therapy is still in its infancy, recent positive results in applications of modified oligonucleotides to against expanded trinucleotide repeats in Huntington's disease in vivo (56) and to protect post-exposure of the lethal Ebola virus infection (57) have demonstrated its powerful potential as a therapeutic agent. The processes aimed at facilitating cellular delivery of nucleic acid-based therapeutic agents using different oligonucleotide modifications or lipid nanoparticles also show promising results (58) (59) . With doubt over the delivery of safe vaccines against coronaviruses (60) (61) , the ability to attenuate viral −1 PRF in-trans by antisense-mediated duplex upstream of a viral slippery site thus provides a general strategy to quickly inhibit viral −1 PRF and replication of emerging human coronaviruses.