Promising Antiviral

The number of people vaccinated against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 – shown here bursting out of a cell – is on the rise. But, because so many of the world’s populace has yet to receive a jab and because no vaccine is 100 percent effective at preventing infection, scientists are still hard at work developing medicines to add to the clinical armoury for fighting the virus. One such drug that has shown promising results recently is the rather uninspiringly named MK-4482 – a molecule that mimics a crucial building block of the virus and interferes with its replication. When given to rodents infected with SARS-CoV-2, the drug, now in human trials, was highly effective at reducing the viral burden and disease damage in the animals’ lungs. Moreover, unlike the currently used antiviral medication remdesivir, administered by injection, MK-4482 is taken by mouth meaning patients with COVID-19 could be treated faster and more easily.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image captured and colourised at NIAID's Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana
• Research by Laboratory of Virology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
• Image copyright held by the NIAID
• Research published in Nature Communications, April 2021