Antiviral therapeutic approaches for human rhinovirus infections

Casanova, Victor; Sousa, Filipa H; Stevens, Craig; Barlow, Peter G

We and others have shown that exogenous LL-37, or vitamin D-mediated cathelicidin production, has potent direct antiviral activity against RV [82, 86, 87] , including cathelicidins from other mammalian species, such as the porcine cathelicidin, protegrin-1, and the ovine cathelicidin SMAP-29 [82] . This indicates that the antiviral activity of cathelicidins is not species-specific against human RV. To further investigate the mechanism underpinning LL-37 activity, we assessed the ability of LL-37 to induce cell death in RV-infected airway epithelial cells as previously we had reported that LL-37 induced apoptotic cell death of Pseudomonas aeruginosa-infected lung epithelial cells [88] . In contrast to these observations, LL-37 did not induce apoptosis or necrosis in RV-infected airway epithelial cells [82] . In addition to its direct antiviral activity, LL-37 has also shown the ability to modulate inflammation [89] , which may prove to be a key property in the development of therapeutics that modulate the inflammatory response to viral infections.