Reporters’ Notebook: The 10 Most Overlooked bioeconomy stories of the week

From Massachusetts comes news of an experimental peptide that could block Covid-19. MIT chemists are testing a protein fragment that may inhibit coronaviruses’ ability to enter human lung cells, says the MIT news office.  The potential drug is a short protein fragment, or peptide, that mimics a protein found on the surface of human cells.

Brad Pentelute, an MIT associate professor of chemistry, is leading the research team. Pentelute’s lab began working on this project in early March, after the Cryo-EM structure of the coronavirus spike protein, along with the human cell receptor that it binds to, was published by a research group in China. Coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which is causing the current Covid-19 outbreak, have many protein spikes protruding from their viral envelope.

Studies of SARS-CoV-2 have also shown that a specific region of the spike protein, known as the receptor binding domain, binds to a receptor called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). This receptor is found on the surface of many human cells, including those in the lungs. The ACE2 receptor is also the entry point used by the coronavirus that caused the 2002-03 SARS outbreak.

More on the story, here.