Abstract
Ebola virus (EBOV), one of the most infectious human viruses and a leading cause of viral hemorrhagic fever, imposes a potential public health threat with several recent outbreaks. Despite the difficulties associated with working with this pathogen in biosafety level-4 containment, a protective vaccine and antiviral therapeutic were recently approved. However, the high mortality rate of EBOV infection underscores the necessity to continuously identify novel antiviral strategies to help expand the scope of prophylaxis/therapeutic management against future outbreaks. This includes identifying antiviral agents that target EBOV entry, which could improve the management of EBOV infection. Herein, using EBOV glycoprotein (GP)-pseudotyped particles, we screened a panel of natural medicinal extracts, and identified the methanolic extract of Perilla frutescens (PFME) as a robust inhibitor of EBOV entry. We show that PFME dose-dependently impeded EBOV GP-mediated infection at non-cytotoxic concentrations, and exerted the most significant antiviral activity when both the extract and the pseudoparticles are concurrently present on the host cells. Specifically, we demonstrate that PFME could block viral attachment and neutralize the cell-free viral particles. Our results, therefore, identified PFME as a potent inhibitor of EBOV entry, which merits further evaluation for development as a therapeutic strategy against EBOV infection.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 1793 |
Journal | Viruses |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 9 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sept 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding: This study was supported in part by grants from Chi Mei Medical Center and Taipei Medical University (109CM-TMU-01), and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST110-2320-B-038-041-MY3) and MOST-CNR (National Research Council of Italy) Joint Research Project (MOST107-2911-I-038-501; MOST108-2911-I-038-501).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- Infectious Diseases
- Virology
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't