Source: Xinhua
04-16-2009 16:44
Special Report: Tech MaxHONG KONG, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Researchers from Hong Kong and Canada found a new inhibitor against H5N1 avian flu virus by using a new technology platform, according to the University of Hong Kong which made the results public on Wednesday.
The university's faculty of medicine and the Genome Sciences Center of the British Columbia Cancer Agency, Canada, made use of computational molecular docking in a recent collaborative research and screened about 230,000 compounds. Twenty of them were found to be potential anti-H5N1 virus candidates.
Of the 20 compounds tested, "compound-1" demonstrated the ability to inhibit neuraminidase, thus the replication of the virus at a level comparable to oseltamivir, an effective drug currently used to combat influenza.
Professor of the university's Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine Allan Lau Sik-yin said, neuraminidase was an agent capable of enabling the virus to spread to normal host cells.
