HKU Faculty of Medicine: Modified Banana Lectin Effectively Inhibits COVID

Left: A research team from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and several other overseas universities find that the molecularly engineered banana lectin can inhibit a variety of coronaviruses. (Adrian Yu/The Epoch Times); Right: The molecularly engineered banana lectin H84T-BanLec, shown as a schematic in the picture here, is found to be able to inhibit virus entry into host cells. Cell Reports Medicine

Researchers from the Department of Microbiology, School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, of HKU, and the University of Michigan of US, Johannes Kepler University of Linz (JKU) of Austria, together with other overseas institutions, have discovered that the molecularly engineered banana lectin H84T-BanLec can inhibit the entry of viruses into host cells. In such a way, it can inhibit coronavirus infection and could become a potentially wide-ranging anti-coronavirus drug.

BanLec is a lectin isolated from bananas, and after being molecularly engineered, H84T-BanLec not only retains its antiviral activity as well as reducing mitogenicity. Experiments have shown that within cell lineage modeling, H84T-BanLec can effectively inhibit COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) and its variant strains (including Omicron), Middle East respiratory syndrome virus (MERS-CoV), SARS virus (SARS-CoV-1) and other infections.