Antiviral evaluation of new peptide bioconjugates using the Chikungunya virus expressing nanuluciferase as infection model

• Grant number: 23/04080-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2023
• End date: June 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Ricardo da Silva Sanches
• Grantee: Manis Tojar Pudja
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas (FCFAR). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The Chikungunya virus is a small, enveloped virus, approximately 70 nm in diameter and its genome is approximately 11,800 nucleotides, constituents of a single-stranded RNA of positive polarity, with a 5'-methyl-7-methylguanosine cap and a tail of 32-poly-A. The genome contains two open reading frames (ORFs) separated by a non-coding emotion. Four non-essential proteins (nsP1, 2, 3 and 4) make up the RNA replicase and are encoded by the 5' region of the genome. CHIKV is among the arboviruses with the highest automatic circulation in Brazil, along with other arboviruses such as Dengue (DENV) and Zika virus (ZIKV). According to surveys carried out by the World Health Organization, CHIKV has been reported all over the world, including India, islands in the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas, and its progression has been rapid and worrying, especially in regions with a hot climate and moist, inspired by the emotion of vector insects. This virus is pathogenic for humans of all age groups and both sexes. The infection leads to the regretful onset of symptoms in patients such as headache, fever, muscle aches (myalgia), nausea, vomiting, and severe arthralgia after an incubation period of 2 to 4 days. The emergence of frequent and increasing cases of complications caused by CHIKV, the absence of approved drugs and/or vaccines that can help in the fight against this disease, added to the promising in vitro results of new compounds synthesized and approved by our research group against host in cellular models using CHIKV-nLuc, motivated the proposition of this project, aiming at important advances in the area of virology and development and evaluation of antiviral drugs. Thus, this project aims to evaluate the antiviral potential of synthetic peptide bioconjugates against the Chikungunya virus in a construction model expressing a nanoluciferase protein for quantification of viral multiplication by luminescence.