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Scientists have identified a molecule that just loves SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It loves it so much that it “hugs” it, practically to death—binding so tightly to the virus that the virus can’t infect our cells.
The discovery of this molecule, a so-called “HR2 peptide,” is a big deal. It could form the basis of a new kind of antiviral drug. One that should work not only on current variants of the novel-coronavirus, but future variants, as well.
But there’s a problem. It’s one thing to identify a molecule in an academic study. It’s another to create a drug based on that molecule. “Academia is not well suited to commercialize a compound,” Axel Brunger, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland and one of the authors of the study, told The Daily Beast.