4 documents found, page 1 of 1
Repurposing anti-cancer porphyrin derivative drugs to target SARS-CoV-2 envelope
Mendonça, Diogo A.; Cadima Couto, Carla Iris; Buga, Carolina C.; Arnaut, Zoe A.; Schaberle, Fabio A.; Arnaut, Luis G.; Castanho, Miguel A. R. B.Antiviral medicines to treat COVID-19 are still scarce. Porphyrins and porphyrin derivatives (PDs) usually present broad-spectrum antiviral activity with low risk of resistance development. In fact, some PDs are clinicall approved to be used in anti-cancer photodynamic therapy and repurposing clinically approved PDs might be an alternative to treat COVID-19. Here, we characterize the ability of temoporfin, vert...
Targeting Zika virus with new brain- and placenta-crossing peptide–porphyrin co...
Todorovski, Toni; Mendonça, Diogo A.; Fernandes-Siqueira, Lorena O.; Cruz-Oliveira, Christine; Guida, Giuseppina; Valle, Javier; Cavaco, MarcoViral disease outbreaks affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide and remain a serious threat to global health. The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and other recent geographically-confined viral outbreaks (severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Ebola, dengue, zika and ever-recurring seasonal influenza), also with devastating tolls at sanitary and socio-economic levels, are sobering reminders in this respec...
Penetrating the blood brain barrier with new peptide porphyrin conjugates havin...
Mendonça, Diogo A.; Bakker, Mariët; Cruz-Oliveira, Christine; Neves, Vera; Angeles Jiménez, Maria; Defaus, Sira; Cavaco, Marco; Veiga, Ana SaloméPassing through the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to treat neurological conditions is one of the main hurdles in modern medicine. Many drugs with promising in vitro profiles become ineffective in vivo due to BBB restrictive permeability. In particular, this includes drugs such as antiviral porphyrins, with the ability to fight brain-resident viruses causing diseases such as HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (...
Receptors and routes of dengue virus entry into the host cells
Cruz-Oliveira, Christine; Freire, João Miguel; Conceição, Thaís M.; Higa, Luiza M.; Castanho, Miguel A. R. B.; Poian, Andrea T. daDengue is the most prevalent arthropod-borne viral disease, caused by dengue virus, a member of the Flaviviridae family. Its worldwide incidence is now a major health problem, with 2.5 billion people living in risk areas. In this review, we integrate the structural rearrangements of each viral protein and their functions in all the steps of virus entry into the host cells. We describe in detail the putative rec...