Hypertonic saline and aprotinin based blockage of SARS-CoV-2 specific furin site cleavage by inhibition of nasal protease activity

  1. Clarissa Li
  2. Adam W. Li

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Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 enters into the human body mainly through the nasal epithelial cells. Cell entry of SARS-CoV-2 needs to be pre-activated by S1/S2 boundary furin motif cleavage by furin and/or relevant proteases. It is important to locally block SARS-CoV-2 S1/S2 site cleavage caused by furin and other relevant protease activity in the nasal cavity. We tested hypertonic saline and aprotinin-based blockage of SARS-CoV-2 specific furin site cleavage by furin, trypsin and nasal swab samples containing nasal proteases. Our results show that saline and aprotinin block SARS-Cov-2 specific furin site cleavage and that a saline and aprotinin combination could significantly reduce SARS-Cov-2 wild-type and P681R mutant furin site cleavage by inhibition of nasal protease activity.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.19.469276: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.11.19.469276v1 on bioRxiv