Researchers at the University of Missouri have identified a crucial protein, known as the occludin protein, inside the human body that plays a critical role in the transmission of the COVID-19 virus from cell to cell after infection. The finding provides new insight into how the virus spreads throughout cells and presents an opportunity for the development of new antiviral drugs. According to lead author Wenjun Ma, this scientific research is of great importance in understanding the underlying mechanisms of disease progression inside the body’s cells, which can help identify and develop proper countermeasures to control the spread of the disease. Ma and his team discovered that when the occludin protein in a cell is damaged by the coronavirus, the virus replicates and spreads quickly to neighboring cells throughout the body, making the infection worse and the symptoms more severe. This newly discovered knowledge could assist developers of antiviral drugs in examining how these drugs can strengthen the occludin protein against infection. The team plans to extend their research to other viral infections in an effort to better understand how viruses interact at the cellular level with the hosts they infect. The study, which was published in PNAS, was funded by the University of Missouri start-up fund, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers of Excellence in Influenza Research and Response, the Kansas University Medical Center, and the Peachtree Collaborative Orthomolecular Medicine, Education, and Research Foundation.
