Inhibitors of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus Identified Based on Host Interaction Partners of Viral Non-Structural Protein 3.

ABSTRACT: Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) is a new world alphavirus and a category B select agent. Currently, no FDA-approved vaccines or therapeutics are available to treat VEEV exposure and resultant disease manifestations. The C-terminus of the VEEV non-structural protein 3 (nsP3) facilitates cell-specific and virus-specific host factor binding preferences among alphaviruses, thereby providing targets of interest when designing novel antiviral therapeutics. In this study, we utilized an overexpression construct encoding HA-tagged nsP3 to identify host proteins that interact with VEEV nsP3 by mass spectrometry. Bioinformatic analyses of the putative interactors identified 42 small molecules with the potential to inhibit the host interaction targets, and thus potentially inhibit VEEV. T

SUBMITTER: Bakovic A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8402862 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature