Immunoprotein impairs Sars-Cov-2

An international team with researchers of the Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI) of the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) showed that an endogenous protein prevents the virus from fusing with host cells. This raises hopes for new therapeutic approaches. A protein produced by the human immune system can strongly inhibit corona viruses, including Sars-Cov-2, the pathogen causing Covid-19. An international team from Germany, Switzerland and the USA successfully showed that the so-called LY6E-Protein prevents coronaviruses from causing an infection. "This finding might lead to the development of new therapeutic approaches against coronaviruses," says Professor Stephanie Pfänder from the Department for Molecular and Medical Virology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), co-lead author of the study, which started at the Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI) in Bern. "We wanted to find out which factors prevent corona viruses from spreading from animals to humans," says corresponding author Prof. Volker Thiel from the IVI. "Now we have succeeded in finding the needle in the haystack, so to speak".