To kill influenza doctors come up with a new experimental treatment that could provide broad protection against many strains of the flu, even at levels of infection that are currently deadly.
There are many caveats, including that it hasn’t been tested on humans yet, but it’s possible that the new molecule could be the long-awaited cure for the flu.
“If you told me 10 years ago that we’d have a small molecule that could do this I would have been completely surprised,” said Ian Wilson, a biologist at Scripps Research Institute.
He added that “It’s a proof-of-principle that small, manageable drugs can behave like these really powerful antibodies.”
Promisingly, the new treatment was also effective at treating human lung cells grown in the lab potentially paving the way to human trials.
“It’s a really interesting study,” Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who wasn’t involved with the research, told that “We need more drugs in the fight against flu, and this approach could provide them.”