A team including researchers from Seattle’s Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason has identified a new pathway for protecting cells from deadly viruses — including the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 as well as the Ebola virus.
The technique, described in this week’s issue of the journal Science, takes advantage of a screening technique for seeking out new genes that can prevent infection.
In the newly published study, the research team pinpoints two genes that have already been the subject of biomedical studies. One gene is called the MHC class II transactivator, or CIITA. The second gene is known as CD74 — specifically, a variant known as p41.
Those genes have previously been thought to be involved in conventional immune responses involving T cells and B cells. The new findings, resulting from a screening technique called transposon-mediated gene activation, shed light on a different way in which the genes block infection.
The researchers found that CIITA can induce resistance in human cell lines by activating CD74 p41, which in turn disrupts the processing of proteins on the coat of the Ebola virus protein. That stops the virus from being able to infect its target cell. The same process blocks the entry pathway for an assortment of coronaviruses — including the SARS-CoV-2 virus that’s behind the current pandemic.
