Peptide inhibitors of coronavirus entry

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad long-term objectives of the proposed work are to develop effective medical countermeasures to be used for the treatment of viral infectious disease caused by exposure to human coronaviruses. The work will focus on the discovery and development of peptide-based therapeutics for the treatment of persons infected with the newly identified Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS CoV) with potentially wider utility of these therapeutics for use in thetreatment of infections caused by the broad family of human coronaviruses. Our preliminary data indicate that short peptides which are derived from sequences representing novel functional domains within the loop region of the Spike protein of the SARS coronavirus are potent inhibitors of both SARS and MERS infection in vitro. We propose to design peptide drug candidates for the treatment of MERS CoV infection by using a combined approach of empiric antiviral screening together with computational method