University of Illinois Professor of Biochemistry Erik Procko has developed “an engineered, free-floating receptor protein that binds the virus and blocks infection.” He recently published his study in Science.
This development has therapeutic potential in treatment of COVID-19. So far he’s found that the “decoy receptor not only binds to the virus in live tissue cultures, it effectively neutralizes it, preventing cells from becoming infected.”
His team is currently testing the receptor’s safety in mice, and then it will be used to treat disease in animals, which will hopefully lead to a broader clinical trial.
You can read the full description of the work here.
Photo by L. Brian Stauffer.