A natural compound, Indole 3 Carbinol (I3C), has been shown in the laboratory to know how block Covid-19 inside the infected cell, preventing it from contaminating other cells within the body. The discovery, the result of an international research coordinated by Giuseppe Novelli, ordinary geneticist of medical genetics at the University of Tor Vergata and Pier Paolo Pandolfi, professor of molecular biotechnology at the University of Turin, must now follow its path up to to become a drug.
How it came to be understood how to ‘imprison’ Covid in the contaminated cell? “Once the virus has entered – explains Novelli to Adnkronos Salute – it tries to do the most important thing for it: copies of itself and then get out of the cells. The problem is: how does it get out? The virus has no Its own ‘machines’ but it uses ours. We – explains the researcher – have begun to study what means it uses to exit the cell and infect other cells. We have identified a class of ‘machines’ called E3 ligase enzymes, also used by the virus Ebola. Ebola is an RNA virus like Sars-Cov2, for this reason we hypothesized that it could use the same enzymes as a ‘machine’. We went to verify and we had confirmation. Once we established which ‘machine’ Covid uses this had to be blocked “.
“Fortunately – adds Novelli – we already knew this ‘machine’ because we were working on it to study cancer. Precisely because we had this experience on tumors, we also had a product we were already working on, which is known to be an inhibitor, or something that blocks these enzymes. Consequently – continues the research coordinator – we immediately tried experimentally to see if it could also prevent Covid from escaping from the cell. And we have seen with the test tube cells infected with the virus, that if you put this compound in it, the virus will not comes out, remains trapped. Now – he clarifies – this compound must become a drug “.
It will take time to go from discovery to application on Covid patients. “I would be very happy if tomorrow morning I could give the drug to the sick – says Novelli – but the experimentation has its times and phases to be respected”. So, he reiterates, “now the first thing is to get the drug in a suitable chemical preparation, for clinical use”. For this reason, at the moment “we are in negotiations with 4 pharmaceutical companies, two Italian and two abroad, which we are evaluating”.
“Of course, to do this we are also finding sponsors because – recalls the geneticist – we need a lot of money. We are asking for funding from national and international public and private bodies. Then – he adds – there is the question of intellectual property, of the patents they work on. the technology transfer offices of the universities. And finally, the authorizations of the EMA and Aifa will be needed “. In short, “normally it takes 15 years to make a drug. I understand – emphasizes the scientist – that we are well used to it because in one year a ‘miracle’ was made with vaccines but on average it takes 10 years for a vaccine” . And anyway, he highlights, “we still do not even have a specific and effective antiviral against Covid-19. But it is normal, because discovering antivirals is more complicated. We must keep in mind – he explains – that the virus does not have an autonomous life like a bacterium. , it is an information molecule that our cells use. There are 500 antivirals currently being studied on Covid. And the reason why there are these times is that an antiviral is different from a vaccine: it is a drug that acts against human proteins , while the vaccine is a cell trainer that only gives information “.