Back

Pharmacological inhibition of bromodomain and extra-terminal proteins induces NRF-2-mediated inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 replication and is subject to viral antagonism

Mhlekude, B.; Postmus, D.; Weiner, J.; Stenzel, S.; Zapatero-Belinchon, F. J.; Olmer, R.; Jansen, J.; Richter, A.; Heinze, J.; Heinemann, N.; Muhlemann, B.; Schroeder, S.; Jones, T. C.; Muller, M. A.; Drosten, C.; Pich, A.; Thiel, V.; Martin, U.; Niemeyer, D.; Gerold, G.; Beule, D.; Goffinet, C.

2022-09-23 microbiology
10.1101/2022.09.22.508962 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Inhibitors of bromodomain and extra-terminal proteins (iBETs), including JQ-1, have been suggested as potential therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, molecular mechanisms underlying JQ-1-induced antiviral activity and its susceptibility to viral antagonism remain incompletely understood. iBET treatment transiently inhibited infection by SARS-CoV-2 variants and SARS-CoV, but not MERS-CoV. Our functional assays confirmed JQ-1-mediated downregulation of ACE2 expression and multi-omics analysis uncovered induction of an antiviral NRF-2-mediated cytoprotective response as an additional antiviral component of JQ-1 treatment. Serial passaging of SARS-CoV-2 in the presence of JQ-1 resulted in predominance of ORF6-deficient variants. JQ-1 antiviral activity was transient in human bronchial airway epithelial cells (hBAECs) treated prior to infection and absent when administered therapeutically. We propose that JQ-1 exerts pleiotropic effects that collectively induce a transient antiviral state that is ultimately nullified by an established SARS-CoV-2 infection, raising questions on their clinical suitability in the context of COVID-19.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.