| Summary: | 碩士 === 高雄醫學大學 === 生物科技學系碩士班 === 106 === Zika virus (ZIKV) belongs to flavivirus and is a single strand, positive sense RNA virus. It causes approximately 4 million infection around the world. The transmission route are by Aedes mosquitoes, sexual contacts and vertical transmission from mother to fetus. It has recently emerged as a new public health threat, because it’s associated with microcephaly in newborns. Currently, the specific anti-ZIKV drug and licensed vaccine are not available, hence to discover anti-ZIKV drug is urgent needed. In previous study, compound B is extracted from birch bark, with anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and anti-viral activity. In this study, we found that compound B significantly inhibited ZIKV RNA replication and protein synthesis without cytotoxicity at experimental concentrations. Moreover, compound B-downregulated COX-2 protein expression. In contrast, COX-2 overexpression attenuated compound B-mediated antiviral effects, which indicated that COX-2 inhibition plays an important role in the anti-ZIKV activity of compound B. Furthermore, compound B protected ICR suckling mice against ZIKV infection. Together, compound B inhibits ZIKV replication by targeting the COX-2 signal pathway and might serve as a promising agent for drug development in the future.
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