The Role of Interferons in Long Covid Infection.

Although the new generation of vaccines and anti-COVID-19 treatment regimens facilitated the management of acute COVID-19 infections, concerns about post-COVID-19 syndrome or Long Covid are rising. This issue can increase the incidence and morbidity of diseases such as diabetes, and cardiovascular, and lung infections, especially among patients suffering from neurodegenerative disease, cardiac arrhythmias, and ischemia. There are numerous risk factors that cause COVID-19 patients to experience post-COVID-19 syndrome. Three potential causes attributed to this disorder include immune dysregulation, viral persistence, and autoimmunity. Interferons (IFNs) are crucial in all aspects of post-COVID-19 syndrome etiology. In this review, we discuss the critical and double-edged role of IFNs in post-COVID-19 syndrome and how innovative biomedical approaches that target IFNs can reduce the occurrence of Long Covid infection.

Rational design of an anti-cancer peptide inhibiting CD147 / Cyp A interaction.

The CD147 / Cyp A interaction is a critical pathway in cancer types and an essential factor in entering the COVID-19 virus into the host cell. Melittin acts as an inhibitory peptide in cancer types by blocking the CD147/ Cyp A interaction. The clinical application of Melittin is limited due to weak penetration into cancer cells. TAT is an arginine-rich peptide with high penetration ability into cells widely used in drug delivery systems. This study aimed to design a hybrid peptide derived from Melittin and TAT to inhibit CD147 /Cyp A interaction. An amino acid region with high anti-cancer activity in Melittin was selected based on the physicochemical properties. Based on the results, a truncated Melittin peptide with 15 amino acids by the GGGS linker was fused to a TAT peptide (nine amino acids) to increase the penetration rate into the cell. A new hybrid peptide analog(TM) was selected by replacing the glycine with serine based on random point mutation. Docking results indicated that the TM peptide acts as an inhibitory peptide with high binding energy when interacting with CD147 and the CypA proteins. RMSD and RMSF results confirmed the high stability of the TM peptide in interaction with CD147. Also, the coarse-grained simulation showed the penetration potential of TM peptide into the DOPS-DOPC model membrane. Our findings indicated that the designed multifunctional peptide could be an attractive therapeutic candidate to halter tumor types and COVID-19 infection.