By boosting the body’s natural stress response, new compounds block viruses like Zika, herpes, and RSV—offering hope for broad-spectrum treatments.
United States: In an important advance, scientists have uncovered a novel group of antivirals that hit multiple varieties of viruses and have potent antiviral activity, including Zika, herpes, and RSV.
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A group of scientists has just found compounds that might give rise to a new lineup of potential antiviral medication that has the ability to deal with a wide range of viruses.
The new molecules do not attack a particular virus; instead, they induce an already existing potent defense mechanism that is present in the host cells.
Researchers from @MIT, @UCSantaBarbara, @illuminaventure and Princeton have identified compounds that can fight off viral infection by activating a defense pathway inside host cells.
— Princeton University (@Princeton) July 14, 2025
In tests in human cells, the researchers showed that the compounds help cells fend off infection… pic.twitter.com/eNRPLec0Ni
According to Felix Wong, who is the lead author, “If the pathway were turned on in response to viral infection, what our compounds do is they turn it on full blast,” notebookcheck.net reported.
This strategy involves a natural immune mechanism of a cell known as an integrated stress response pathway.
Usually, when cells detect a viral infection, they initiate the pathway that then turns off the production of more proteins, thus making the virus not able to replicate itself.
The new compounds discovered are the ones that enhance this response. To identify these molecules, the team has devised a new screening method to screen almost 400,000 different chemical compounds.
The result was a number of good prospects. These compounds were able to assist the human cells to resist infection by RSV, herpes virus, and Zika virus, particularly in tests involving cells.
The IBX-200, which was one of the compounds, was also demonstrated to be effective in mice, where it lowered the viral load as well as reduced symptoms associated with a herpes infection.
The interesting point about such an approach is that the compounds seem to not interact with non-infected cells but become activated only in case of a virus causing the stress response.
Moreover, as James Collins, who is one of the authors of the paper, stated, “We are very excited about this work, which allows us to harness the stress response of the host cells to arrive at a means to identify and develop broad-spectrum antivirals,” notebookcheck.net reported.